EDITOR’S PERSPECTIVE: You can stick your stickers where the sun doesn’t shine
EDITOR’S PERSPECTIVE. “I was in a good mood… then I saw it.”
I WAS in a good mood when I set off. It was a Saturday, the sun was shining, there wasn’t much traffic on the motorway. Then I saw it…
The instant transformation in my personality, I must say, I found a tad worrying, but I have some mitigation.
I was tootling along when I found myself behind a car with two stickers in the back window reading “Baby on Board” and “Princess in transit”.
I pulled out, not to get past, but to draw level, and wound down the passenger window – you wouldn’t have been able to do this in old cars but it proved a really useful feature in this case – and delivered a couple of expletive laden rebukes.
“A tad unreasonable,” the driver, a chap in his early 30s, shouted back.
“Yes, it ******* is, you liar. You have no-one on board, you’re a fraud. You’re worse than a fake blue badge holder. And if you had someone in with you, which is highly unlikely, your stupid stickers would put your imaginary kids unnecessarily at risk as all I want to do now is ram into the back of your crappy little car instead of keeping the two chevrons apart approach I would normally take. Ooooh, I was going to crash then I read your sign… Has your ‘My other car’s a Porsche’ sticker peeled off, pal?”
Actually, it was early January and I was taking my dog to the pound. I had intended him to be a life-long companion but I had come up behind a car with a message in the back window informing me that “A dog is for life not just for Christmas”.
Well, I had only had him since December 25 and had grown to love my four-legged friend, but sadly for him, the idiot driving that car had ensured he had delivered his final bark. He’s gone now…
Then there was the time I got behind the lorry with the Manchester United[1] sticker on the back. That didn’t end well.
Obviously none of these stories are true. Well, I hope it’s obvious. Surely no-one would drive around with such a sticker on their vehicle?
I mean, I didn’t actually react in such a way, at least not externally. The thoughts though, were there. Latent. Nasty.
I didn’t feel too bad about the last one as I simply drove past shaking my head and muttering to myself.
The second incident bothered me. I like animals and would never mistreat one, but really? The sort of ****hole who is on the way to dump the Christmas dog – Wenceslas the Weimaraner – in a bag in a lay-by surely isn’t going to change their mind because of a sticker (“Okay then, fair point, we’ll keep him until Easter”) precisely because they are an ****hole.
Same goes for anyone who might be considering smashing into the back of a vehicle, only to be dissuaded by the “Junior Beckham in the back seat” sticker.
By the time I arrived at my destination my thought process, which contained most of the above, had ensured I hardly remembered the majority of the journey or the rest of the vehicles around me.
Before I made the returned journey I nipped into the petrol station and emerged the proud new owner of a banner sized adhesive reading: “Get that sticker removed or else…”
References
- ^ Manchester United (www.rotherhamadvertiser.co.uk)