In touch with my inner Tipper Gore

Let me start this rant by stating, first and foremost, I am not a prude.

I am not offended by profanity; in fact I am fluent in it. I thought Eddie Murphy’s “Raw” and “The Hangover” and even “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” were hysterical. I have enjoyed, and continue to relish, off-color, inappropriate humor. In fact, under the right circumstances, I am fluent in that too. Viva la dick jokes, to paraphrase an old friend.

But my inner Tipper Gore was awakened this morning thanks to a fellow motorist whose mother must be dead, blind or at minimum, house-bound.

I was sitting at the McDonald’s drive thru waiting for my morning jolt of caffeine (don’t judge, the carbonation is way better from the fountain than the can) when my eyes wandered to the midnight blue Nissan truck ahead of me. The truck was sporting three bumper stickers on its rear window. One read, “Sex Instructor – FREE LESSONS” and one read “CAUTION – Driver Masturbating.”

I don’t know what angered and annoyed me more – the driver’s obvious lack of taste and class or the fact that the bumper stickers were both in poor taste and not at all funny. I was relieved that Cat and Tate were not in the car though I could easily imagine the conversations those stickers would generate.

“Mommy, what is a sex instructor?”

“Mommy, why does someone need lessons in sex?”

“Mommy, what is masturbating?”

“Mommy, why do you look like you are having a stroke?”

My bigger fear of course is that in 10 or so years Jim Bob and his South Park on wheels could be pulling in to my driveway to escort one of our ladies to a tractor pull or pornfest. Fortunately Darling Hubby owns guns and shovels and knows how to use both. Perhaps we should make that our bumper sticker. Or doormat.
But I digress.

At the risk of sounding like Andy Rooney, or my grandfather, or anyone over the age of 70, I must ask, really? THIS is what we have come to? We are now a society where a person’s claim of self-gratification while operating a motor vehicle should be plastered on a window for all to see? What is the personal or societal benefit of this communication? And, if true, is this idiot not advertising that he is committing at minimum, a misdemeanor and in some states a felony?

I am equally offended by bumper stickers with graphic anti-abortion messages, especially when they are accompanied by the lovely full color photos, bumper stickers with actual profanity and/or racial, religious or homophobic slurs and bumper stickers telling me that I am going to hell. Actually the last one doesn’t bother me as much since it is both probably true and a reminder that warmer days are ahead after all of this snow, but still and all, I don’t like the kids fretting about my eternal damnation while we are going to swim class.

While I don’t think of earlier times as golden eras, I have to say that I think a little bit of repression and self-censorship is not always a bad thing. I fully support your right to believe that auto-erotic asphyxiation is for lovers and that bald eagle tastes great with fried potatoes smothered in spleen-of-liberal gravy, I just don’t want to be accosted with it on my morning commute or with my kids in the car.

Since I have neither the patience nor inclination to keep the girls housebound, I must, instead craft a pithy and wise response to the girls’ questions about these visual assaults. While I dodged a bullet today, I am sure, with their ever-improving reading skills that the questions are coming. My current front-runner canned response is “oh honey, I feel so sorry for that person since they clearly have no friends to tell them how classless and annoying they are.” Truth be told though when Cat and Tate are old enough I will likely resort to, “with stickers like that, I am not at all surprised.”