...Bought the T-shirt, right? Not so nowadays. If one wants to properly mark a significant life event, one buys a sticker and slaps it on the rear end of a vehicle, preferably the one that person customarily drives. T-shirts are so 1990's. (Confession: a small, very repressed part of me still wants an airbrushed t-shirt from Gulf Shores with my name and a friends emblazoned across it. Oh and there have to be dolphins. Dolphins that are leaping in the shape of a heart over a red rose suspended above the ocean at sunset. Perfect.) And keychains? Don't even get me started. Nope, it's all about the stickers now if you want to let people know where you've been, what you like, what you do.
I'm not sure if the proper terminology would be "bumper sticker" anymore. I rarely see them actually affixed to the bumper. If you're cool, you position the sticker in the lower right hand corner of your rear window. This placement prevents dangerous driving practices, such as checking your rear view mirror and being overcome by the irrational fear that your highly stylized initials are following you. The lower right side of the back window also makes it easier for your passenger to read the sticker(s) on other vehicles to you as you drive, because we all know that reading any kind of text while driving is hazardous to our lives. Hence the large, flashing orange signs placed along the interstate to remind us of this very fact. If your stickers represent the members of your family (including the 13 family pets), the lower left corner of the rear window is the traditional choice. If you are supporting your favorite sports team, you will have no less than 3 stickers of varying sizes and colors placed randomly anywhere over the entire back end of the car. Drivers of pickups favor the space immediately on either side of the license plate. Any closer to the edge of the tailgate and someone might think that you should actually be driving a sedan.
In the beginning of the car flare craze, the stickers were easily readable, even by circumspect drivers such as myself, who never avert their eyes from the road, even to check on their two small children in the back seat. They are both confined to car seats on opposite sides of the vehicle. What could possibly go wrong?? Original, bona fide bumper stickers could easily fit not only John 3:16 in the King James Version but also the name and phone number of your church in a font that you could distinguish at three car lengths. But lately I have noticed a trend in these ingenious little badges. They are becoming smaller and more inscrutable. The difficulty in deciphering the message of the sticker is less a function of the font size and more a matter of the actual numbers and letters inscribed on it. (I cannot even comment on stickers that resort merely to colors to convey their meaning. That's what flags are for, people.)
It is not unlikely, in fact, it is very likely, in the course of a 10 minute drive to the grocery store for a pint of ice cream...er...I mean, bunch of organic kale, that you will see at least 5 of these incomprehensible symbols. 26.2. 13.1. OBX. Now people are just getting snarky with these things, taking us back to algebra with all these meaningless numbers and letters. But if you tailgate closely enough you will see the tiny explanation of the sticker. 26.2 miles. Oh great, this one runs marathons. What's he doing in a car, anyway? Why isn't he running? 13.1 miles. Okay, they get a pass. They only ran half the marathon, came to their senses, and are most likely now driving home to eat that pint of ice cream. OBX. OBX?!? Is this a new species of African antelope on display at the zoo? Nope. Turns out this one refers to the Outer Banks off the coasts of the Carolinas. So these people visited the Outer Banks, spent some time, ate some seafood, and loved it enough to slap those letters on the back of their vehicle which is now four hundred miles away from any banks, outer or otherwise.
But this is the one that gets me hooked. I don't know if it's the enigmatic boldness of the letter "X," or the sheer rush of genius that I feel every time I see those 3 letters grouped together and know what they mean, but I am now intrigued more than I am befuddled by these small circles traveling all over the country on the hatchbacks, tailgates, and trunk lids of various vehicles. In a way these stickers are now less about what they mean to the driver of the car they decorate, and more about the community of fellow drivers. Now they connect us, through our experiences, to one another. Even as we are ensconced in our own cars, we can discover a little bit about the lives of the people hurtling past us at 70 miles an hour.
However, for those of you sporting the 26.2, or even the 13.1 stickers, we are going to have to find some other kind of common ground.
-Ashley
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