ACK! Sticker Overload!

Three in the afternoon finds me in the carpool line at Park Maitland School, sucking in the fumes of GMC Valdez in front of me, staring at their bumper stickers which, since I am driving a Prius, are at eye level.  On this day I spot a decal for a tony boys’ summer camp in North Carolina, and another for the sister camp in Virginia.  Just above that, on the flat area next to license plate which seems custom-designed for such things, is a sticker of Lacrosse sticks with the letters “LAX,” which anyone in the proper tax bracket will tell you stands for the sport and not for the California airport.  Moving up to the windshield, we find two more of those cloying white oblong stickers—the one in the left corner has the silhouette of a black lab (dog of choice for the private school set), and the one on the right reads “ACK” (the airport code for Nantucket, you rube). I guess I should be impressed, but it all makes me want to HRL.

 The other major category of vehicles in our carpool line, minivans, I find slightly less objectionable but no less predictable.  Many of these sport stickers with a child’s name scrawled across a silhouette of Junior’s favorite hobby. From this we can surmise that Brooke is a cheerleader par excellence and Justin is an All Star (#52!) Baseball Player.  Or, the minivan might have a windshield decal with stick figures—an ingredients label of whom we will find inside—a stick mommy, a stick daddy, a pigtailed stick girl, a cap-wearing stick boy and a diaper-clad stick baby.  Maybe a stick Fido, too.  I call these “smugness stickers.”  Above the little stick people should be a conversation bubble which reads “WE are the perfect American family!  Too bad YOUR husband ran off with a Hooters Girl six months into your fertility treatments!”

 Not to be outdone, my husband and I decided that we’d wallpaper our back windshield to show the world who we really are.  We patched together a giant blindspot of stickers from our undergraduate and grad schools, favorite charities, baseball teams and places in Europe we hope to visit, AIX and IRL.  Unfortunately, the next morning I backed over the MLKMN and was charged with DUI.

 Seriously, I ponder the sociological purpose of plastering your car’s tookus with labels.  The original intent of bumper stickers, back in the day of “I Brake for Animals,” was to convey your compassion (Practice Random Acts of Kindness), your cleverness (The Moral Majority is Neither), or to urge some sort of action (Kiss My Grits).  By contrast, for the moms in my carpool line, the purpose seems to be to turn yourself into an elitist caricature with four-wheel drive.  I could be plopped down behind a good 80 % of the  mega-SUVs in the line and be faced with essentially the same messages.  Oh, instead of ACK, the sticker may read BCK (Beaver Creek or Breckenridge, take your pick), and the dog might be a golden retriever, or better yet, a quarter horse, but you get my drift.  Why not just cut to the chase and etch on your bumper “My Husband Makes A Mint!” Or perhaps a vanity plate reading simply “SHALLOW.” How I long to sneak into their garages at night to apply more truthful stickers, such as “Follow me to the Botox clinic!” and “I’m Changing the Weather! Ask Me How!”

 Too cynical, you say?  Let me ask you this. If these stickers aren’t designed to declare how chic we are, then why is the silhouette dog never a bloodhound or the vacation spot never TOL (Toledo)? Why is the sport always LAX or FDH (field hockey), not DPB (Duckpin bowling)?  A thousand bucks to anyone who brings me a photo of a Range Rover with the silhouette of a pit bull.  You’ll know where to find me—I’m the one in the carpool line between HH-Hilton Head and OBX-Outer Banks with the unadorned rear.

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