Bumper Stickers, or
Yes, This Is My Truck. No, I Won't Help You Move
by Karen Williams | July 21, 2006 - Seminole Chronicle
Sometimes I fear for the future of this country.
We're just too gall-darned serious.
How do I know that? For openers, you can drive for miles and never see a funny bumper sticker these days.
That equals countless blas bumpers and missed opportunities to send fellow travelers into convulsive laughter.
Call it a hunch, but I bet there would be less road rage if we had more stickers that said, "My other car is...also a piece of junk" or "I'd rather be sleeping."
Of course many people don't like bumper stickers because they're difficult to remove. Thus a person must keep putting fresh stickers over worn, faded ones or settle for an ugly gray blob on the bumper.
I, for one, will risk a blob or two in order to tickle the funny bones of bored drivers.
"Let's just put loads of bumper stickers on the car and see how trashy we can make it look!" my son Joel exclaimed sarcastically as we drove my car around South Beach some time ago.
I had a fresh new bumper crop, and I was proud of those stickers - at least until Joel's comment.
Then I became angrily protective of them and determined to bring a resurgence of this inexpensive, happy novelty.
One of my new stickers asked, "How's my driving? Let's discuss it on my cell phone." Another proclaimed, "I'm an agnostic, dyslexic insomniac who lies awake at night wondering if there really is a dog." Yet another inquired, "Buffalo have wings?"
But it just didn't fly with Joel.
Bumper stickers and I go way back. On my first car, a 1974 Ford Pinto, I placed an evangelical Christian bumper sticker that advised, "Don't be grounded when the Rapture comes." My boss at the time, who was neither an evangelical Christian nor a skilled reader, thought it said, "Don't be grounded when the Rupture comes" and nervously asked me to explain the meaning of the sticker.
He more easily understood a co-worker's bumper sticker that proclaimed, "Eat beans - America needs the gas."
It offered comic relief from the oil shortage of those days, and perhaps that saying begs a revival.
The Internet offers thousands of bumper stickers for sale, and I recently spent some "me time" guffawing over "I saw Elvis making crop circles," and "What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?"
Other good ones included "Life is short. Go buy the shoes." "If you can read this, I've lost the trailer!" "It's hard to make a comeback when you haven't been anywhere." and "If there is no God, who always pops up that next Kleenex?"
And then there was "To err is human. To forgive - highly unlikely." "A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand." "The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate it." and "42.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot."
Call me zany, silly, loony (well, actually I'd rather you didn't) but I think that bumper stickers are the missing ingredient in this bland melting pot called America.
I would like to sell bumper stickers and snickers in a giant refrigerator magnet version. They will stick to a car but can be easily removed and switched out for a new chuckle du jour.
It's an idea whose time has come even though, as one bumper sticker warns, "It always hurts to be on the cutting edge."
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Copyright 2006, Karen Williams
