The Autopsy of a Bumper Sticker

I have conflicted feelings about bumper stickers. I am against them on principle because I don't like to be visually force fed someone's political or religious beliefs while I am driving to work. I also think that funny bumper stickers aren't really that funny and, even if they are, do you really want the same joke broadcast to everyone on the road with you? The worst bumper stickers are the ones with small writing, where you have to get pretty close to the car if you want to read what it says. Those are just plain dangerous...

Having said all that, sometimes, I love a bumper sticker. For example, I love to find a car with a bumper sticker or license plate holder that says something like “Daddy's little princess” and has a dude driving it. I also think that there is nothing classier than silhouettes of two naked chicks where one is a devil and the other is an angel. They make a poignant statement about the duality of the human state, you know, how you can only experience joy after sorrow and you can only reach for the divine after foregoing baseness. I'm sure that was what the trucker was trying to convey when he bought those mud flaps...

It's been some time ago but, I bought a bumper sticker once as a gift for a friend of mine. I had to go up to Salt Lake for an autopsy. When you work where I do, going to an autopsy makes for a long night. You have to leave at about 3:00 AM in order to be at the medical examiner's office by 8:00 AM. If you

aren't there on time, you risk having the doctors start on someone else before your case. Each autopsy takes several hours so, if you have to wait then you are just stuck for hours. Anyway, I had been up all night after working on the case locally, then following the body up north. By the time the autopsy was over and all the evidence was collected and packaged for transport back home, it was early afternoon.

I drove about 100 miles from Salt Lake before stopping at a truck stop to stretch out and get gas. Coming out of the restrooms, I saw a rack of bumper stickers including one that said, “I go from zero to horny in 3.2 beers.” On impulse, I bought the sticker and hatched a scheme.

I have a friend who is an attorney here locally. He is a pretty straight laced guy and pillar of the community. He goes to church on Sundays and only rarely swears out loud. I decided that this bumper sticker would go perfectly on the bumper of his car, hopefully somewhere that he wouldn't notice it for quite a while. I spent the remaining 200 miles of my drive home tired but happy at the idea of this poor guy driving his modest sedan back and forth to work and home and church and little league all the while, proclaiming that he drinks beer and becomes amorous as a result. When you're tired like that, these sorts of things just seem funny.

I gave up on my idea as soon as I got home and slept for a while. I did give him the bumper sticker and told him about my plan, which, for the record, he opposed. I told him he could have the sticker and put it on someone else's car, if he wanted. He didn't. That was the one time that I succumbed to the influence of the Big Bumper Sticker lobby. We should close the tax loopholes for those fat cats!

Just so my friend knew that I still liked him, even though he shot me down on the bumper sticker idea, I waited until he and his family were out of town on vacation and then put a “Ron Paul for President” sign in his front yard.