Bumper Stickers

  

There are ways to enhance your car through modifications and design, giving you a more aesthetically pleasing vehicle and maybe you’ll suddenly be able to pick up chicks. Alternatively, you can just slap a bumper sticker on the back with a quirky, ironic saying or support for some politician more crooked than your place job of said sticker or a proclamation that you honk for a specific deity.  

Outside of my local, generic toy store, the parking lot was scattered with the usual suspects: the Mommy-mobiles. Minivans, SUVs, hatchbacks. Their bumper stickers weren’t worth much contemplation. My Child is an Honor Student. That’s great, lady, maybe you should be buying them more books instead of toys then. Baby Onboard! Good to know; I’ll be so less tempted to ram into your car at a high velocity now. The new fad was stick figure stickers to represent the members of the family, and I stared puzzled as to why some people choose to procreate so often.   

There was, however, one car that jumped out at me like from behind the bushes of normalcy.   

I couldn’t tell what color or even what kind of car it was because not a single inch of painted skin was exposed. This thing was covered in bumper stickers, save for the windshield and most of the back windows. It just screamed, “examine me because look at how different I am!”   

I was alone in the parking lot. My feet brought me across the aging asphalt, as I inched closer to read the novel amount of words on this death trap with wheels. As I got closer, I could finally make out what the stickers said. Many of them were parodies of some I had just seen on Mommy-mobiles. My Child Beat Up Your Honor Student. Honk if you love Satan! Kraken Onboard! Have You Drugged Your Child Today? It was information overload... but this was just on the outside of the car.  

Y’know, I’m not normally one for breaking and entering, you can just ask my parole officer, but there was an undeniable itch to look within this mobile political statement. Just a peek. Then I’m off the stuff for good. No one would know. No one was around. The parking lot was like the suspended moment before an old-western showdown, where plastic bags and runaway shopping carts had become the impromptu suburban tumbleweeds. Best thing to do before you do something wrong is to come up with excuses. I was tying my shoe. I leaned down to tie my shoe, and I bumped my head on the handle of the door. It just sort of opened by itself. I got up and just kind of fell in. That’s how it happened. It’s very possible.   

The distinguishable pop of the car door opening fit into my ears before I had even realized I grasped the handle of the passenger-side door. The adhesive and wear and tear made the door creak and struggle enough I almost felt bad for disturbing it. I was overwhelmed with another information overload within the car but in the form of objects rather than words. I hate using the word “junk” because I figure it’s probably important to someone, so we’ll leave it at “a large collection of items of no discernible value or origin arranged in a disorderly fashion and smells bad.” I don’t know which has a better ring to it.  

The glass box in the passenger’s seat housed a lizard of some kind. She twitched insanely upon my arrival and scurried back into the cardboard hut in the corner of the container. It was colored pink with a marker, leaving uneven patches, and had the name “Petunia” scrawled on the side. That’s why I assumed it was a girl lizard, but, hey, I’m not one to judge a lizard’s lifestyle. The rocks that littered the bottom were also pink but severely worn out and covered in a film of grime. Next to the lizard aquarium was half of a broken disco ball filled with Cool Ranch Doritos. The sharp edges from the shattered mirrors and the abused nature of the disco ball, in general, made me seriously question it to feasibly function as a bowl for arguably the best flavor of Doritos. To wash down this dangerously held snack while you hang out with Petunia was the biggest size of Big Gulp you can buy, which is the Double Gulp. Bright red and manufactured white called attention to itself against the dull gray console it sat against, in the cup holder that looked like it doubled as an ashtray. With the lid on, I could determine it was a dark soda, but by the state of this car, I didn’t want to further investigate any dark, mysterious liquids.  

My powers of observation told me this has been a waste of time. This is just a person with a messy car and an unhealthy obsession with bumper stickers. Let’s just get back to the mission of buying a Nerf gun at this toy store and – the sun peeks a ray or two out of the clouds – get on my way back to the dorm and – the sun shines on a very specific spot on the floor of the driver’s side of the car – forget all of this happened and – SHIIIIING! SPARKLES! A short sprinkle of light shined up into my eye from a burlap sack near the gas pedal. Was it a stray mirror from the ravished disco ball? Like a slow-motion playback from a sports game, I reached my arm over Petunia, avoiding the disco Doritos and the sticky condensation of 64 fluid ounces of Mysterious Alleged Soda, and flicked the fabric to the side with my fingers.   

My powers of observation now told me I was snooping in the car of a master jewel thief. The gems and metal shimmered like the one clear spot of water on the slime-topped lake. It was the shine in a cartoon villain’s eye when he starts to get greedy. If I had dared to grasp the bag, I could only imagine its weight, heavy with dense metal and intense illegality. I was shaking. I was considering taking it...  

My eyes shot upward to see a dark outline that was human-shaped, the sun and shining gems obscuring my vision. Slowly shuffling back, I focused in on a thick-set man in a Green Lantern t-shirt, the decal cracked and faded from age and (presumably? hopefully?) washing, gray sweatpants that were inside-out, and unlaced, aged sneakers. His face was framed with unkempt sideburns and thinning hair, all dark like his eyes, surrounded by thin, wire-framed glasses. His calloused fingers were wrenched around two plastic shopping bags as the black holes on his face centered right on my forehead like a sniper’s laser sight.  

“Don’t you DARE steal my Doritos!” he exclaimed, the words bursting out of his mouth in a heavy, angry voice, as if the letters of each word could be tangible, falling haplessly like plastic bags full of vanilla pudding on my head. “Stay away from my dear Petunia, you sick pervert!” he shouted again, but by the time he reached where I had been snooping, I was already bolting for the open arms of the toy store's automatic doors. Within the sanctuary of the lobby, amongst the discount bins of assorted balls and the hard plastic seats of display swing sets, I was safe.   

I stood with too much adrenaline and too much fear, shifting my weight from one foot to another, just waiting for the inevitable moment when the owner of the stickered car would find me and drown me in questionable soda or slit my throat with disco ball mirrors or something like that.   

But no such moment came. I peered back to see the car that once sat and waited for some attention had disappeared.   

I brought myself to shuffling my feet towards the store, inundating me with bright cheery colors and plastic and hyperactive children and dollar amounts and in general nothing that wanted to kill me. Signs for Nerf guns, the exact thing I had come here to buy in the first place. It seemed like hours ago that this had been my mission. Actually... it was. I took the bus.  

Over to the shelf I fluttered with new purpose and ease, knowing that, at least if the bumper sticker guy returned, there would be plenty of witnesses to my murder. I knew the kind of Nerf gun I wanted; it stored like 50 Nerf darts in a barrel-like old gangster Tommy guns.   

There was a near-audible plop of my heart hitting the soles of my feet when I saw the shelf empty. I turned to find an employee to ask if they had any others in the back and found a girl with heavy lids and a frown like a sagging wrinkle across her face.   

“Do you have any more of these kinds of Nerf guns?” I asked her, pointing to indicate which ones I meant. She didn’t actually make eye contact with me when she forced herself over to my spot, acting as if I were just a disembodied voice she had to obey. She peered at the tag on the shelf.  

“I’m sorry,” she stated, not even feigning that she was, indeed, sorry, “some guy in a Green Lantern t-shirt bought the last one in stock.”