The Raging Sea

I don't like bumper stickers--or rather, I'm automatically prejudiced against people who have bumper stickers. It doesn't even matter if I agree with (or even like) your particular bumper sticker. If you have a bumper sticker, I'm less inclined to want to know you. If I already know and like you before realizing you have bumper stickers, there's always a strange feeling of disappointment when I see your car.

It's a strange fact about me that I've only recently stopped to consider, and I've reached the conclusion that something in the very nature of bumper stickers suggests that the people who make use of them are loud-mouthed, stubborn, and arrogant to the point of thinking their opinion is automatically the right opinion. Awhile back I heard about a study that found that people who have bumper stickers are more prone to experience road rage--the more bumper stickers, the more extreme the road rage tended to be. This did not surprise me.

What did surprise me was finding the online equivalent of bumper stickers plastered on a pacifier discussion board I was reading yesterday. Community members participating in the discussion had these labels appended to their profiles: EBF (Exclusive Breastfeeder), Cloth Diaper Baby, and I Went Natural!

Ugh. So what? Your husband never gets the bonding experience of feeding their baby a bottle of breast milk? You're one of those women who can afford cloth diaper laundry services? (I'll be more impressed with an online bumper sticker that says "I wash my own cloth diapers.") And wow, if bragging rights make the pain worth it, be my guest; I will let your all-natural self stomp all over me.

Don't get me wrong: I have plenty of friends who are EBF, cloth diaper, all-natural supermoms. But if I ever caught them plastering their online presence with these kinds of stickers, I might rethink sending them a Christmas card next year.

I can't help but wonder if the road rage mentality somehow transfers to playgroup settings. Maybe when I see a mother unpacking a child from a car with one of those yellow caution "Baby on Board" stickers, I'll grab my young daughter's hand and run as fast as I can in the other direction.