Backing Up Your Bumper Sticker

            I’ve long had an aversion to any and all bumper stickers, and for several reasons.

            For one thing, they’re ugly and mess up your car.  For another, I really don’t feel the need to proclaim anything about myself to strangers on the highway.  Considering my fondness for acceleration—not to mention the borderline-juvenile glee with which I’ve been known to dispatch slower cars ahead of me—I figure I don’t need anything making me more memorable.

            Recently, however, I’ve had to reexamine this disdain for stickers.  Why?  Because my church has been handing them out.  It’s a discreet little window sticker—innocuous white letters stating “Central Christian Church” on a clear background.  I see them all over the place, and every time I do I think, “Hey, friend!  I go there, too!”  In the middle of a busy commute or a hectic workday, it’s nice to look over and see a fellow church member in the next lane.

But here’s the rub: I’m chicken to put the sticker in my window on account of how I drive.

I mean, it’d be bad enough having people think nasty things about my employer, my alma mater or my political party as they’re watching the back end of my car zoom away, but my church?  Don’t get me wrong—I don’t think I’m a jerk on the road.  I try to be considerate to everyone.  But I know darned well that there are times when my, um . . . exuberance . . . might leave a bad impression.  Just sayin’.  And at such times, it would just seem weird to communicate, in essence, “Hey!  If you enjoyed having your doors blown off just now, come to church Sunday and meet more people like me!”

This all resurfaced just yesterday when a coworker—a good Catholic and a first-rate husband and father—shared a story about his aggravating drive to work.  It seems he’d been in the left lane of the freeway in his BMW 3-series when a man slightly ahead and to his right changed lanes and got right in front of him . . . and slowed down.  Adding injury to irritation, this inconsiderate rolling roadblock then turned on his windshield washers, which missed his windshield entirely and arced right over his roof, dousing my coworker’s clean car.

When the opportunity presented itself, my friend passed his assailant and returned fire.  (Question: Are anyone’s windshield washers aimed right?)  This game of lane-change leapfrog continued when the slow guy—who now was laughing and visibly enjoying himself—suddenly found his accelerator, passed my friend and hosed him down a second time.

No word on whether either car sported a bumper sticker, but wouldn’t the whole thing have been funnier if there’d been a “WWJD” or “My child was student of the week” sticker involved?

            Lots has been written about how much braver some folks are in their cars than in their own skin.  Funny what two tons of metal, plastic and glass will do for the psyche, isn’t it?  Funny, too, how there’s often an inverse relationship between the braggadocio of the vehicle and the character of the person behind the wheel.  Reminds me of that saying about suddenly acquired wealth: “If you’re a jerk when you’re poor, you’ll be a bigger jerk with money.”   Bottom line, we’ll do things bumper to bumper that we’d never dream of doing face to face.  It’s a shame, really, and it’s something my conscience reminds me of every time I express my irritation on the expressway.

            After he’d told his tale, my co-worker and I had a laugh plotting various ways he could get revenge on his freeway attacker if he ever encountered him again.  Eventually, though, I just shook my head and advised him to let it go and be the bigger man.  To his credit, he did and he was.

Hm.  Wonder if my church has any more of those stickers?