Freedom of speech is alive and well in Fort Collins. In fact, about half the population is editorializing. I am, of course, talking about bumper stickers. The stop-and-go crawl down College Avenue on a Saturday afternoon would be unbearable without psychoanalyzing each driver through what they stick on their bumpers.
These stickers communicate so much more than what’s written. As eyes are windows to the soul, bumper stickers reveal the driver’s soul through their rear-view mirror.
They reveal what the driver most wants to say about himself or herself.
Prominent in northern Colorado is one that says “Ask first before hunting or fishing on private land.” Yes, there’s an explicit message: get permission. But what the driver most hopes we’ll realize is that he’s not only a big-time property owner, he owns the kind of property that people love to traipse upon.
A sticker touting your honor student is a great way to reward the kid’s performance, but who would deny that it also compliments the responsible gene pool?
Who knows the point behind “I Brake for Unicorns,” but the driver wants us to know that he or she views the world through a very different lens.
As for politics, stickers reveal which turn signal, left or right, the driver favors, so to speak. A few years back, “Support Our Troops” was a bipartisan expression. Today, while everyone shares the sentiment, many avoid the sticker for fear of being mistakenly grouped with Bush’s dwindling fan base.
Even before you read the text, the total number of stickers can be revealing. By my calculations, lefties stick—well—liberally. And true to the left’s reputation for talking volumes without saying much, left-of-center stickers pack in the text, like “It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.” Clever, if illegibly small.
Have fun spotting unexpected combinations of vehicle and message. Show me “This Car Protected by Smith & Wesson” on a late-model Volvo sedan, “Trees Are the Answer” on a Hummer, or better still, let’s see a single bumper bearing both “Ted Kennedy’s Car Has Killed More People Than My Gun” and “Somewhere in Texas There’s a Village Missing an Idiot.” That’s what happens when diverse couples share a car. Hey, opposites attract.
I like the quirky ones. Whoever puts “Visualize Whirled Peas” on their bumper must be fun at a party. They seem to be saying, “it’s a zany mixed-up world, so we might as well have some fun with it.” Some stickers baffle me, like “I heart my dog head.”
There is a disturbing development in the arena of mobile personal tailgate expressionism: Calvin peeing. The imaginative rascal from the Calvin and Hobbes comics, by the brilliant Bill Watterson, has been hijacked by yahoos and stuck in pickup windows. Calvin is typically shown peeing on the logo of a competing truck maker. The minor crime is the copyright infringement—none of these are legal—while the outrageous crime is the boorish bastardization of a delightful whimsical character. The explicit message—this Ford driver hates Dodge—is drowned out by the implicit message: behold the full extent of the driver’s limited imagination.
My personal history with bumper stickers reflects failed attempts at acting cool. My first advertised a very cool rock radio station, while my latest read “i schwätze Schwäbisch.” After all, what’s cooler than an enigma?
Alas, I remain uncool, proving the ultimate maxim of bumper stickers: the printed words cannot obscure the truth about the person behind the wheel.
