Perhaps, like me, you can recall a time when the back window of every other car wasn’t adorned plastered with a garish “In Loving Memory” sticker.
At first it was the Dale Earnhardt sticker, which declared the owner’s sentiment for the deceased NASCAR driver known to fans as, The Intimidator. For what I hope are obvious reasons, this was bad enough. I mean, dedicating a chunk of your car’s window to memorialize the life, and mourn the death of a person whose professional talents were, to be both fair and succinct, going very fast and turning left often — who does that?
If you’re scratching your head and wondering “What’s all the fuss about?” while visualizing your own car: Stop Reading Now.
One would figure that in the grand scheme of things, if that’s all that is required to impress others regarding someones professional talents, there should be more stickers to George Washington, Socrates, or JJ Abrams (creator of Lost). Oddly enough, no.
Just when I was learning to tolerate the annoying visual blight, the In Loving Memory stickers transformed into tributes to “heroes.” Typically, these were military people who’d been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. We’ll skip over how it’s a simultaneous unapologetic in-your-face tribute and a purposefully inflammatory passive-aggressive gesture. However, given that a) I’m a military vet, and b) I live in a military community, I understood (somewhat) and forgave (begrudgingly) these asinine rolling therapy sessions.
But then came the In Loving Memory stickers to random, everyday people. Not soldiers or cancer victims or even deities. Not legends of industry, politicians of note, or Sesame Street characters. No, these are just rolling tributes to random people.
I grimace at the absurdity, the naivete, and the insincerity these *ahem* tributes convey to the rest of us. Why? Because they attempt to force me to acknowledge someone’s “grief” over the loss of someone so profound, that they’d rather be blind to traffic and become an eyesore than allow YOU to forget the existence of someone you never knew.
It’s as though they’re crying out, “Suffer for me, bitch. Suffer!”
From a basic sentence comprehension perspective, we must ask WHAT precisely is “In Loving Memory” — the sticker? the car? the rear window? this person’s life? my time? the act of driving? If it’s the latter, the deceased’s memory is inextricably linked to reckless driving and being a general nuisance.
And let’s be honest, you don’t see these stickers on BMWs or Mercedes. No, it’s always the rusted out, piece-of-shit, Pontiac with the bad exhaust and the mismatched quarter-panel. That is, except for when they’re on the “penis compensation” trucks…you know, the ones with a set of faux balls hanging from the trailer hitch.
So, fine then, I’ll play your game. This post is dedicated In Loving Memory …
…of not being forced to share a complete fucking strangers’ sloppy-seconds grieving period;
…of not being forced to witness your horrid driving being done in someone’s memory;
…of not letting poor, uneducated, trash visually pollute every place I’m forced to look with an impersonal -yet heartfelt- message that I don’t want, about a person I don’t know, and that had no impact upon me what-so-fucking-ever.
In short, this post is dedicated In Loving Memory of Being Left the Hell Alone.
. . . and exclaims, Sylar’s been here. For those of you who don’t watch Heroes, Sylar saws off the top of peoples’ heads to removes the superpowers from their brains. Santa, here, has been Sylarized.
