Bumper Stickers

I have long been a fan of bumper stickers. When I was a teenager I would change out my bumper stickers often. Whatever band had most recently impressed me would go up, and whatever band had gone out of my favor would come down. Typically had somewhere between 5-8 stickers on my car. As an adult I have not lost my zeal for bumper stickers. I currently have 8. I sport a Widespread Panic sticker, an Auburn sticker, a Yellowstone Park sticker, a Glacier National Park sticker, a ultimate frisbee sticker, a REI mountain biking sticker,a Patagonia wave sticker, and a Mountain Hardware sticker on my car. I know having all these on my car is not "cool" to have as a 26 year old guy but I just love them. I love showing support to the things I enjoy and I love seeing someone else on the road who enjoys similar things in life. It is nice when I roll up on someone else with a Panic sticker and for 3 seconds we make eye contact and understand each other. Perfect. Not much else can do that. When I pass by another Subaru owner it does nothing to me, when I see someone else in a North Face jacket it does nothing, if I see someone else mountain biking...nothing, but with stickers it brings a connection.

Where I become less of a fan of bumper stickers is when the stickers are controversial simply for the sake of being controversial. If you love a candidate so much you want to put his sticker on his car, then good for you and the political system. I once put a Herman Cain sticker on my car when he ran for Senate and was pretty proud of it. When he lost though I immediately took it down. Don't understand people who still have Gore stickers on their car. But, those are fine. You are a republican or a democrat, about 50% of the country shares similar sentiment with you either way. However, when your sticker is there basically just to upset everyone who disagrees with you it seems silly. I get that God created Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve, but really what is the point of this sticker? Does if change anyone's mind? Does it teach people something they didn't already know? Or does it just anger people that are homosexual?

Even then I don't get too upset about these because at least they are humorous and entertaining but the past two days I have seen two different stickers that just seem ridiculous. It seems like the creator of them created it simply to tick certain people off. Yesterday I saw a sticker that said, "Id rather be water boarding". Really? When choosing between driving your $25,000 truck through Columbus and listening to music or water boarding someone you would choose water boarding? Clearly this is simply created just to upset all the people who view this as torture. Then today I was again behind a truck and I noticed they had a sticker of a confederate flag and the sticker said, "It Ain't Over". What? The Civil War ended in 1865. 145 years later and you still aren't convinced it is over? Let's pretend this person's great great grand poppy was in the confederate army and this person actually does think the south would be better off if they had seceded. Even then that person has to know that the confederate flag means one thing to most people these days and that is slavery. So this person is driving down the road with a sticker that says, "I support slavery".

I just don't get people. If you have things in life that make you happy and you like sharing that with people go for it, but if your entire intent is to be divisive just leave your car parked in the garage.