I personally do not believe in using bumper stickers to express my most deeply held beliefs and opinions for all the world to see. But that doesn’t have to do with bumper stickers themselves, so much as it does the fact that my personal opinions tend to change at the speed of a teenager with ADD playing “Burnout Revenge” after consuming 5 cans of Code Red Mountain Dew. And so that is why God made blogs. And people with no long-term memory.
But every so often I see a bumper sticker that resonates with me so profoundly, on such a deep level, that I just have to share it with others. But first, a little background.
Nine years ago I taught at a private, religious school, the kind of school where there were multiple families with 9 children (or more). Now as I have mentioned here before, I am really not that maternal. I feel like there are exciting and important things for me to do here on this earth, but that for just me personally, they do not involve reproducing myself in this way.
So when I was assigned to carpool duty, and I would watch these mothers pull up in their minivans, disgorging enough offspring to make up multiple sports teams, pregnant again, with an infant or a toddler (or 3) strapped into car seats, knowing that this was all they EVER did, I developed an excruciatingly strong aversion to minivans.
For me, minivans became the symbol of a person who had lost all sense of self, and a life that had lost all meaning and purpose. But that is just me. I’m sure that there are many people out there for whom my life would be a total living nightmare.
And so that is why, when I saw this bumper sticker, I was so happy. Because it made me feel that maybe, just maybe, I am not the only person out there who feels this way. It said,
“Minivans are tangible evidence of evil.”
And I can totally understand that. For me it’s kind of like, all right, I may have abandoned many other dreams and standards by the wayside. Yes, I may routinely serve my husband cold cereal for dinner, and I might stand idly by while rabbits consume every green and living thing in my yard, and I do allow animals who poo in my bathtub to sleep with me on my pillow, and sometimes I may not get out of my pajamas until I know my husband is on the way home from work. I may believe that my couch has magical healing powers and that imaginary snakes totally surround my house, but by God, I have held firm to this: I am not driving a mini-van.
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