Before we start, I'd like to say that this column might offend you. If you are the kind of person who enjoys putting decals on your vehicle, then probably don't read any further. Should you decide to read on, you have accepted that your feelings may be hurt by the end. You have been warned.
OK. Have you ever been driving and come up behind a vehicle with a decal of a family on the back window? I'm pretty sure each family member decal is purchased separately to allow for any variation. For example, it can be a picture of a man, a wife, a dog, or maybe simply a woman and six cats.
These decals seem to be everywhere these days.
And they're driving me insane. Seriously, there's nothing cool about sticking cartoon images to symbolize your family on your car. Mini vans are pretty un-cool on their own, and then people feel the need to tack on family photos, family pets included? Lame.
Then you start sticking them on vehicles like Range Rovers or big, hulking Jeeps. Now that's appealing. Some good looking man hops into his 4X4 after the gym and speeds off with the picture of him and his goldfish on the rear window. Why? What is the point?
I think their strangeness comes from our need to advertise our relationship statuses. Facebook is not enough, I guess, so we need to let people know when we're driving. Obviously it'd be super attractive if I pulled up next to come guy with a single female decal on my car. He'd totally be into me. But how would we ever manage a conversation? We're both driving, we both have places to be.
I once saw a woman who took advertising to the extreme. She had a female decal, looking all happy and spunky, and a cat decal. But rather than putting the woman and the cat side-by-side, there was a person-decal-sized space in between, as if to say "if you're interested, your gender-preference decal can go right here and join our perfect decal family."
Gag. I think we all need to just get over all the secrecy and just start putting our phone numbers on our vehicles. That would totally get rid of the guess work. Because a person could be lazy adding in a new decal to the family. Maybe he got busy at work. Maybe the decal store was out of new woman decals. A taken-person is pretty likely to remove their phone number, thus squashing decal related infidelity.
You would hate to get a decal that didn't look reasonably similar to your spouse. Imagine: "You Civic decal is thinner than I am, are you trying to tell me something?" or "What gives? Your decal has curly hair and your ex has curly hair but MY HAIR IS STRAIGHT!"
There's also the whole problem with divorce. Do you peel the decal off? Or maybe put a nice red decal strip across it, signifying that he/she is out of your life? So many options. Maybe there's a way to show the decal throwing all of your clothes out onto the lawn. I'm sure it could be done.
Decal drama, let me tell you. The point I'm slowly getting to is that I hate these decals and they make me want to drive dangerously when I see them, almost as much as that man in the Sebring who tailgated me all the way to Weyburn Tuesday. So much rage.
And I bet he has family decals.
