Getting to Know Your Fellow Drivers, Like it or Not

I’ve never been a bumper sticker person. There’s only so much I want my fellow drivers to know about me.

I have nothing against people who do like them, mind you, and I enjoy ones that express an original or clever thought. But most don’t.

I’ve never approached another car at a stoplight and said to myself, “gee, I wonder if her child is on the honor roll. Oh, yes, there it is. Well done, driver’s child!” Or: “Say, where does this person stand on health-care reform? Ah, a photo of Obama with Hitler moustache, stethoscope and Grim Reaper's scythe; that answers that."

Some state the obvious. You might have guessed, without official confirmation from his bumper, that this guy would rather be sailing, given how he’s drifting all over the frickin’ road like he’s tacking in a typhoon.

Meantime, the tone of most political bumper stickers these days is so corrosive, it’s a surprise bumpers aren’t rusting from underneath them. Sometimes, when I’m behind a particularly angry bumper, I wish I had a sticker on my front bumper, printed in reverse so it’s legible in a rear-view mirror, that says: “Please quit screaming at me.”

And then there are those times when bumper stickers offer more information than I care to know about the people with whom I'm sharing the road, or, for that matter, the planet.

Like the van I was stuck behind for a couple of miles the other day. The first two stickers I read were innocuous enough: “God bless America” and “Don’t tread on me.” Then it got more interesting: “9/11 was an inside job,” “The Federal Reserve is not federal!” “Infowars.com.” “Don’t blame me. I voted for Chuck Baldwin.”

I had to Google those last two when I got home. Infowars.com is the website of Alex Jones, radio host, 9/11 truther and “dedicated and aggressive Constitutionalist.” Baldwin has run for president and vice president and announced this year he was moving to Montana after God told him that it was the “tip of the spear in the freedom fight.”

Even before I Googled, I surmised where this guy was coming from, and I spent much of drivetime with a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel, worried about rear-ending his van – no doubt packed with weapons, canned goods, and probably a couple of trussed-up college professors or IRS agents to be used as hostages if necessary. And if I did rear-end the van, I’d either have to exchange insurance information with the driver, which would lead, presumably, to a screed about how the Trilateral Commission controls the auto insurance industry, or we’d both be immolated in the explosion set off by his home-made bombs, whereupon I’d be briefly mentioned in news coverage as the innocent bystander who was luckless enough to cross paths with one of the FBI’s most-wanted domestic terrorists. (This is one of my great fears, by the way: Dying as an “innocent bystander.” However I go, I want to be at the top of the bill, please.)

When he turned out of my path, I breathed a sigh of relief, happy to find myself behind a driver that merely threatened to beat up my honor-roll student and shoot me if I tried to take his guns away. Oh, and he invited me to honk if I loved Jesus.