Safety Fork, the

There was a back-to-school advertisement in my mail today.

“So what,” you say, “it’s August and kids are heading back to school in a couple of weeks.”

Yeah, but it was for Firestone. You know, the tire company. I don’t know about you, but when my mom asked me what I needed for the school year, I never said, “Oh, a backpack, some crayons, notebooks, pencils, a box of Kleenex, tires…you know, the usual stuff.” I really love Vic and Sue—I’ll buy them whatever they need—but a quadraplex of whitewalls really isn’t going to help them learn the capital of Luxembourg or the square root of nine.

And it’s not as if tires are some kind of impulse purchase I might get myself while I’m doing their back-to-school shopping, in the way I might think oh, pants without holes…I could use those. And it’s not as if tires are something they’re reminding me I’m out of. “Say, we better pick up some tires; I think I used up the last ones yesterday,” doesn’t exactly roll off the tounge.

Really they’re just saying, “Hey, we’ve got tires for sale. They’re really great tires. We think you’d like them. You know, on your car.” So why can’t they just say that? Are tire manufacturers finding that people need to be cajoled into replacing worn-out tires? Do people actually replace their tires more often when reminded that tires are readily available?

I figure I’ll replace my tires when they wear out. I figure most other people figure they’ll replace their tires when their tires wear out. Since I’m pretty sure that sending us advertisements doesn’t make our tires wear out faster, what’s the point?