All the world’s a bumper sticker. At least that’s how it feels at the moment.
Recently, my husband and I were driving and we came to one of those intersections where all three lanes of traffic had no choice but to turn left. I put on my indicator and couldn’t help but notice the other cars who weren’t indicating.
“I hate it when cars don’t indicate,” I said. “It’s like they assume I know that they are just going to follow the road rules and turn left. For all I know, they could be intending to go straight – illegally, mind you… Where’s their sense of community? Their pride of being part of a left-turning group, all indicating their left-turningness together?”
“Does it make you angry?” my husband asked.
“No, it saddens me,” I said. “It makes me feel… alone.”
“That’s very interesting,” he remarked. “I have often wondered what other people thought of my failure to indicate at intersections such as these.”
(By ‘often’, I think we can all assume my husband meant ‘I’m actually only thinking about this at this very moment since you happen to have raised it as a topic of conversation’. Still, I appreciated the fact he was feigning an interest.)
“Well, now you know,” I replied. “You make people like me sad.”
“And I expect you find it a bit of a turn off,” he observed.
“Yes. Yes, I do,” I mused although I should now stress that I wouldn’t necessarily be hot for someone simply because they DID indicate.
We then discussed a bumper sticker awareness program I could start. Some initial ideas included:
TURN ON (YOUR INDICATOR) AND TURN ON (ME).
TURN OFF YOUR TURN OFF AND TURN ON YOUR INDICATOR.
YOU TURN ME OFF WHEN YOU FAIL TO TURN ON: INDICATE.
or even
INDICATE, ARSE-CLOWN.
Interestingly enough, the other day when my youngest son took an unscheduled toilet break behind the park bench my husband and I were sitting on, my husband came up with his own bumper sticker awareness program for his MEP (Minimum Effort Parenting) style. The bumper sticker will apparently read:
IF YOU CAN’T SEE THEM, YOU’RE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THEM.
I argued that it probably should read “IF YOU CAN’T SEE THEM, YOU’RE PROBABLY NOT BEING RESPONSIBLE ENOUGH FOR THEM” but he thought that was too wordy.
Bumper sticker awareness programs? Yep, that’s what my life has come to. Somewhere along the way, somebody – quite possibly me – has obviously failed to indicate. Arse clown.
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