Personality and Cars

Since I decided to make the addition of bumper stickers to my vehicle, I've begun paying close attention to the decoration on other cars. I've seen ones that made me laugh out loud, others that made me mad and some that are just lame. What I find interesting is that you can sometimes tell what kind of person owns the car if they have a couple of bumper stickers plastered on it. At least, I like to pretend I can.

The other thing I find interesting is that I often see the same cars on my route to work every morning. Traffic here is extremely heavy and one would think that I'd never see the same car twice and know it. But when someone has bumper stickers or personalized vanity plates, it's easy to pick them out if you pay a little attention.

There is one car, for example, driven by a matronly grandmother-type. She drives an older Oldsmobile with two stickers on it. One says "Honor Mother Nature" and the other says "It's our turn to nurture the earth." I picture her living in a small cottage house with a vegetable garden fed by her own compost pile. She recycles and conserves water as much as she can. She may or may not have a cat.

There is another car that I see turning into the hospital parking lot with me almost every morning. It's a new Corvette driven by a woman who appears to be in her mid-forties with bleached blond hair. She has eight Pink Ribbon magnets on the sides of her car, all in different sizes. I'm not sure what the story is there. Is she that committed to a cure? Has she known eight women with breast cancer? Does she have breast cancer? Maybe she just likes pink. Whatever it is, I'd like to know her story.

I often see a Mercedes with a vanity plate that clearly identifies the driver as a proud plastic surgeon. He's always on his phone, trying to drive at least 10 miles per hour over the speed limit, weaving in and out of traffic. I've seen him attempt to pass people on the right shoulder. He kind of scares me. I imagine him living in a huge house with a pool or maybe a tennis court and no time to enjoy any of it.

While driving between here and Raton I've seen a lot of interesting stickers. Granted, I don't see those vehicles again, but they are still interesting.

Last time I saw a Jeep with a particularly funny sticker. The sticker said "Get a taste of religion: Lick a witch." It also had a couple of other stickers with pagan symbols on it. It was driven by a heavy-set man with a long beard and long hair. I couldn't tell where his hair ended and his beard began.

On my way back to Denver I passed a Subaru with a sticker that said "Bark less, wag more." I've seen this sticker before. It's usually chosen by dog lovers who believe we should correlate more in our life with those things in a dog's life. I tend to agree. Most dogs are loveable, playful, simple in their wants and needs, eager to please. Maybe our world would be a better place if we lived more like that.

I also saw an RV with a sticker that simply said "Be nice." I couldn't agree more. Being nice is simple and good. One rarely goes wrong by being nice. Thus ends my philosophical ramblings on personal vehicular expression.