Sure, I appear to be a normal, dependable, steady kind of Man, but in reality I like to look for those little quirks and flashes of hilarity that brighten a day and put a spring in one's step. Many times I've found such material contained in bumper stickers.
Oh, there are tons of inane bumper stickers, of course. But there are a chosen few that have tickled me no end and caused me to smile. For instance, I saw one several years ago that made me laugh out loud, and I still remember it: "We don't CARE how you did it up North." Unexpected things like that just add spice to life.
But an incident on my way in to work one morning soured me on bumper stickers. I will no longer look to them as a way to lighten my mood.
See, the problem is, bumper stickers always say the same thing. If you put a bumper sticker on your car that says "I got the crabs at Joe's House of Seafood!", a person will naturally assume you like to eat at Joe's House of Seafood, since you're advertising for them. If you subsequently get food poisoning at Joe's House of Seafood so severe that you blow chunks of crab meat into orbit from the force of your anal convulsions, your bumper sticker still cheerfully implies to the world you thoroughly enjoy the experience of getting the crabs at Joe's House of Seafood. An astronaut could see a crab chunk floating past his capsule, turn to his buddy, and say, "I wonder how that crab chunk got way up here. To my knowledge, crustaceans haven't mastered space flight yet." And his buddy would say, "I don't know, but that reminds me -- when we get back, let's go eat at Joe's House of Seafood. They must have great crabs there, because my neighbor put a bumper sticker on his car about them."
So bumper stickers are not always to be trusted. I learned that, as I've said, to my chagrin one morning.
My standard route to work is the interstate; however, if it's backed up by one of the accidents that are legally mandated to occur every morning just to tick me off, I take an alternate route. Two-lane, winding roads, through wooded hills. Fairly peaceful. Since I have to go to work anyway, it's at least an idyllic, if longer, route.
On the morning in question, I pulled up to a stop sign, not too far from my office, right behind a minivan. In hindsight, I realized the minivan had been stopped at the intersection for a longer-than-normal period of time. At the time, though, I was lulled into a peaceful, mellow state by the serenity of my drive. And then I saw the bumper sticker.
Technically, "window sticker" would be a better description, for the owner of the van had eschewed the standard bumper placement for a higher-visibility location on the rear window of the van. The sticker read: "If you love Jesus, HONK." The "honk" was centered on its own line, beneath the first part of the message.
Now, normally, I ignore these types of things. Not worth the effort to self-identify to another Christian. However, no one else was at the stop sign, and I was feeling peaceful and mellow and one with the world and generally happy, so I tapped my horn twice. This was not the single, long, loud blare that implies "Move your rustbucket before I drive right over it"; no, this was the cheerful, friendly, double-tap "toodle-oo", which says "I see and agree with the message you have so prominently displayed on your vehicle, and am following the instructions thereon. Please do not shoot chunks of crab out of your anus at my car."
The vehicle ahead of me lurched, briefly, as though I had somehow startled the minivan itself with my horn. Then, through the rear window, I saw the silhouette of the driver's right arm as it left the steering wheel. I suppose I expected something like a "thumbs up" gesture of agreement with my honking. And a digit was extended, yes; but it was not the thumb. Oh no. It was not the thumb at all.
I was flabbergasted. The van pulled out into the intersection. I'm sure that if a minivan could burn rubber as it accelerated, this one would have done so.
As fate would have it, I pulled up abreast of this van at a traffic signal a few minutes later. (The van was turning left; I was going straight.) Movement, seen out of the corner of my left eye, caught my attention, and I turned to look.
The passenger-side window of the van had been rolled down, and I was staring at a child who, judging by his actions, had obviously eaten several gallons of lead paint during those moments in his life when he wasn't pursuing his favorite hobby of jamming his fingers into electrical sockets. He was flapping and gamboling around in his seat, and I stared at him a few seconds before I realized what he was doing: He was raising his right arm and waving the "stink" of his armpit at me with his left hand. His mother, who otherwise appeared to be a normal person, was raving at me, saying something about dropping her lipstick and trying to find it, and being late for school, and I should be more patient, and other spittle-flavored rantings.
Gone was the idyll of my morning. Gone was the peaceful commute to work. Gone was my patience with this idiot and her offspring.
I rolled down my window, filled my lungs, and bellowed, "READ YOUR DAMN BUMPER STICKER, LADY!"
Realization dawned on her face, and it did my heart good to see the chagrin spread across her features. She grabbed the arm of her spasmatic son and once again attempted to smoke her tires as she pulled away, but the best the underpowered minivan could do was grunt in its transmission as she turned through the intersection.
The bumper sticker is eternal. Your opinion or mood may change, but the message on the bumper sticker will always be there.
Think before you stick.
(c) 2012 John Puckett
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