Bumper Sticking

Many years ago we had a big brown Chevy van-  this is before we were mandated to tie kids into their seats, so we traveled with a porta crib in the 'way-back' and let them bounce around semi-contained until we got to our destination.  One trip in particular was two days driving up to northern Ontario to my parents camp.  Tying two toddlers down for two days would have been unthinkable.  But there I go digressing again.  

On the back of our van was a bumper sticker, just one, that we put there because we thought the sentiment funny for our upscale preppy town, plus it fit the van like it was made for it:  "Support Your Right to Arm Bears".  

We had the van for several years, whatever the life of a van was, I don't remember, but one day our lovely older neighbor (we were sure lucky on that side of the house!) stopped in the driveway to chat, spotted the sticker,  and started laughing.  She had been reading the sticker for all those years as "Support Your Right to Bear Arms" and confided that she and her husband were perplexed all that time as to why 'such nice people' would be fans o' the gun!  

The moral of the story is to not be too subtle when picking your bumper stickers.  They are harder than tattoos to remove!  Here is one I spotted in the hospital parking garage the other day, as well as the one of my poster-child for anger-management current next door neighbor.  I was out playing a game on my iPhone the other night while walking the dog and walked by his house-  the WiFi network offerings added a vile and nasty new Bushism password to the list so I knew it was his.  Made my hand feel dirty!  

He must have had a minor accident resulting in many dents along his driver side of the car which he promptly 'fixed'  with a new row of bumper stickers extending all the way to the drivers door now.  The interesting thing is that even with all the politicking going on for this election, there is not a single bumper sticker telling us what his views might be this time around other than trying to get Bush out.  I have a feeling that his choices of a black guy on one ticket against a women on the other are what makes him burn rubber every time he leaves his house.  Maybe I should give him a GPS with Montreal as the destination, worth the investment if he would take me up on it.