"Jersey Girls don't pump gas" said the magnet on the car in front of me.
I'm all for Jersey girl pride and everything, but is not being able to pump gas really something we should brag about? I like staying in my nice, warm car while the attendant pumps my gas as much as the next New Jerseyan, but this is not why Bruce Springsteen wrote "Jersey Girl". But on other days, when I'm stuck behind people who take forever to find their wallets (they couldn't figure out they'd need them before the attendant asked them to pay?) or there's only one obviously stoned attendant working, I miss pumping my own damn gas.
I moved from New Jersey to Massachusetts (where I mostly used public transportation or paid extra for full service at the one gas station that had it) to Oregon, the only other state in the union that doesn't allow people to pump their own gas. It wasn't until I moved to Seattle at the age of 25 that I realized I would HAVE to learn to pump. People laughed at me when I asked about full-service and while charming people into pumping gas for me worked when I was a stranger with Oregon plates, it didn't go over so well when I had Washington plates and people saw me every other day. So I finally broke down and learned.
Now I am mostly neutral about the whole gas pumping question. Or thought I was, until I saw that stupid magnet. I mean, who brags about the things they can't do? I bet no one in Oregon has a magnet like that. People in Boston don't have magnets that say, "I can't pronounce 'r' correctly". People in Hawaii don't have magnets that say, "I can't drive in the snow."
This is the kind of idiot pride that foisted "Jersey Shore" on us. Ugh.