The other day, my mother and I were procrastinating together by taking a lovely evening stroll through downtown Camden, Maine. We should have been packing to go to Jenny Brook Bluegrass Festival, but we didn’t have much to do and neither of us could muster the focus to do it. So we went out and bought ice cream and wandered around streets we’d never been up before. On our wanderings, we came across a car plastered with bumper stickers. Since we were procrastinating we stopped and read each bumper sticker, since so rarely – when driving – does one ever get the chance to do so.
Looking at that car with its plastering of stickers got me thinking about my own car, which is by no means bare of stickerage. And weirdly enough, I’ve been thinking about my obsession with stickers on and off for the last couple of weeks since I saw that car. So, I’ve decided to write a blog post about bumper stickers. This is some pretty deep stuff, guys.
It all began with regular old kid’s stickers: the kind you get at the pediatrician’s office or at a particularly health-conscious bank. The doctor gave out stickers after kids got their shots and as far as pavlovian responses go…well, I sure was conditioned. As a little kid, rather than associating shots with pain – which I didn’t like – I associated them with stickers – which I loved. It got to the point that when my baby brother was born and we took him to get his first shots I was upset because I didn’t get any shots and, therefore did not receive any stickers.
I very carefully placed my hard-earned stickers on my window in my mom’s car. I remember being very upset when my mother told me they were selling that car and they had to scrape all my stickers off. She didn’t let me put stickers on the new car’s window (Hmm, I wonder why?).
The next stage of my sticker obsession was fed by my piano teacher. When I finished learning a new piece, she’d let me pick out a new sticker to put on the sheet music. My next piano teacher didn’t give out stickers, he gave out stamps. I didn’t like him as much. (Truth be told, I disliked him for more reasons than his lack of stickers, but this isn’t a blog about piano teachers so I won’t go into that).
I started collected bumper stickers long before I had a car. In fact, I started collecting bumper stickers during a time in my life when I was determined not to learn to drive (Again, that’s a long complicated story that has no place in a blog about bumper stickers). At first, I collected stickers given out by my school for making honor roll. I think they were meant to be put on my parents’ cars, but I kept them instead and stuck them to the inside of the cupboard where I stored my backpack and school books. I collected more and more stickers: political stickers, social stickers, panda stickers, every sticker that came into my hands found its way to the inside of that cupboard.
When I finally got my driver’s license and had a bumper of my own, I immediately began covering it with stickers. They’re mostly music related: my favorite bands and festivals, the local music stores, that sort of thing. My bass case is also covered in bumper stickers – which isn’t all that unusual.
Okay, so we’re almost 600 words into this post and if you’re still with me, thanks – I told you this would be a shallow one. But now we’ve come to the most exciting development in my relationship with stickers: I now have my very own bumper sticker!
Well, technically it’s my band’s bumper sticker, but it’s a bumper sticker that exists to promote something that I’m a part of and I couldn’t be more excited. You too can have your very own Miners Creek bumper sticker if you come to one of our live shows or you can purchase one through Band Camp.
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