STICKERS

Years ago, it was the craze to have I stop for . . . (fill in the blank) stickers on your bumper. I found one that said, I stop for no reason. One day I was in the right lane of a two lane road when the car to my left turned to the right in front of me. I hit the brake with both feet and everything on the seat crashed to the floor.

Before I could start up again, the light turned red. I was bent to retrieve my purse when someone knocked on my window. A motorcycle rider smiled at me. I rolled the window down. “That was a really good reason,” he said with a laugh. My panic and anger disappeared.

Now, the craze is to tell everyone about your family in symbols or words.

Recently, I pulled up behind a black SUV. The back window had four stickers:
• TEXAS in orange, the word MOM underneath
• Oregon State University, MOM underneath
• a bucking bronco and rider in brown on cream, MOM underneath (I looked it up: Wyoming)
• a yellow O, MOM underneath (didn't have to look it up: University of Oregon)

I wanted to run up to her window and say, Wow, MOM – that’s a lot of colleges . . . and kids.

But of course that would be rude. And her stickers are much better than the sticker I saw on a pickup canopy: a row of guns in decreasing sizes – rifles down to handguns – with THIS IS MY FAMILY next to it.

I have stickers on the back of my current vehicle. These help me find my white SUV in parking lots full of white SUVs. One is the shape of Oregon with a yellow O in the middle. Two others are symbols meaningful to me, but understanding those is unlikely to cause a confrontation. I don’t plan to add any others.