“Radio Shack can’t have it both ways,” said Judith Crowley of Cowen, Phillips, an investment bank that was prepared to finance the transaction. “If you buy a D battery from them, they have to know your ZIP code; if you want to use the ladies’ room, they ask your ZIP code.”

“You don’t have to be a geek to work here, but it helps.”

Radio Shack officials defended their reticence. “If we give out our ZIP code to every Tom, Dick and Harry, pretty soon people will start coming in all the time,” said COO Malcolm Natanel. “That’s going to cut into our employees’ ability to goof around with our remote-controlled drag racers, a benefit we offer because it’s cheaper than health insurance.”

RadioShack is, according to the company’s Web site, one of the nation’s most trusted consumer electronics specialty retailers, and it uses that trust to persuade millions of cash-paying customers at the company’s 1,300 dealer outlets to give up their ZIP code as a condition to buying its products. “For years there’s been speculation that the company’s sales associates use it as a way to find women, but that’s an urban myth, like albino alligators in sewers,” said industry analyst Tony Sopson of Mercer Securities in Atlanta. “Has anyone ever seen a Radio Shack employee leaving work with a woman?”

“It comes with a built-in lava lamp, but batteries aren’t included.”

Company officials would not rule out a possible sale in the best interests of shareholders. “Radio Shack will continue to explore strategic options,” said Niles Davis, a spokesperson. “What we won’t put up with is somebody asking a bunch of nosy questions.” 

Garst’s: Scene of the crime.

Four decades later, Reisdorph is fighting back the only way he knows how: by filing legislation to create penalties for bullying, and making “aggravated” bullying punishable by jail, with no ability to avoid prison by paying a fine. “We as a society have got to stand up collectively to bullies, since there are so many who are unable to do so individually.”

Bully’s weapon of choice.

The bill is the sort of feel-good legislation that ought to pass both houses of the Legislature in a breeze, as has been the case with similar laws in 27 other states. There’s just one problem: “Jimmy Dale Embree Jr.,” Reisdorph says, as he looks warily over his shoulder before dashing to his car, which is parked in a reserved space outside the state Capitol.

Reisdorph as a teenage bully magnet.

As the state legislator hits his stride, a reporter hears cries go up from a gang of young boys who have been hiding under the portico that runs along the front of the building. “There he is,” shouts one. “Get him!” yells another. They give chase, and as Reisdorph struggles to open his car door, they bombard him with water balloons before a member of the state police arrives, causing the boys to scatter.

Jimmy Dale Jr.: “Why do I do it? ‘Cause it’s fun!”

Reisdorph is the victim of what political analysts have dubbed “bully-lobbying” — grass-roots efforts to forestall, water down or even kill anti-bullying bills before they become law. “I was a bully, and I want my kid to be a bully too,” says Jimmy Dale Embree Sr., who is now a 55-year-old long-haul truck driver with a front yard filled with his prize-winning collection of rusted-out junk cars. “If we are going to prepare our kids to compete in a global economy, we need to teach them to be tough and resilient,” Jimmy Dale Sr. says as he spits snuff juice into a topless 7-Up can.

“If you file that bill today, your ass is grass and I’m a lawnmower.”

Child development specialists are unanimous in their support of anti-bullying measures, but former bullies have recently begun to challenge their methodology. “A lot of them don’t use statistically valid samples, and the guys who write them are — I don’t know how to put this any other way — dinks,” says Earl “Duck’s Ass” Bennett, who dropped out of Joliet, Ill., Central High School in 1959 and is now a loading dock supervisor for Central States Tool and Die Co. “When I confront them at academic conferences and express my concerns, they inevitably back away from their conclusions.”

“I can’t believe she called me a nimmy-not!”

All of which is fine with Reisdorph, who says he welcomes a robust debate on the subject when his bill comes up for its first hearing later this spring. “I want to hear all points of view,” he says with a nervous look on his face as pulls out of the parking lot, leaving Jimmy Dale Jr. and his gang in a cloud of gravel dust. “Just please — don’t let them stuff me under the Senate podium again!”

Bin Laden sought seclusion in the mountains of Afghanistan following the disastrous attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.  Salinger sought seclusion in the mountains of New Hampshire following the disastrous reviews of the film version of his story “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut.”  The two men were never seen together, and mysteriously canceled a scheduled appearance on “The Hollywood Squares” when they learned that Wally Cox would not be a member of the show’s nine-celebrity “tic-tac-toe” box.

Wally Cox and Joyce Maynard:  No connection, but the lack of any parallels is rather eerie.

Both Salinger and bin Laden became increasingly eccentric in their later years, with Salinger drinking his own urine according to his lover Joyce Maynard, a woman half Salinger’s age who, like him, scored an early literary success.  Her world-weary adolescent memoir “An Eighteen Year Old Looks Back on Life” caught the attention of Salinger, who sent her a letter complimenting her style “because you obviously copied it from mine.”