I love reading bumper stickers. I enjoy learning about strangers’ passions; reading important service announcements, alerts to humanity or just plain funny ones. There have been many occasions where I actually laughed out loud thanks to a bumper sticker. I love the idea that a persons’ thoughts and beliefs or warped (because the best are always the warped ones) sense of humor are sent out to the universe for everyone to see. A car can cover a lot of territory, therefore a message on its bumper has the ability to reach millions of people, make them think or simply give them a chuckle.  You just gotta love them.

I grew up with cars that did not have bumper stickers. My Dad didn’t like the way they looked and his cars were typically new, so who could blame him. My Dad generously gave me his hand-me down cars, so I never felt comfortable putting bumper stickers on them. I wanted to respect his beliefs. In my early twenties, I needed to express my views to the world but instead of putting them on my bumper, I put them on my checks. I felt that I was sending out subliminal messages of peace to my fellow earthlings. After all, they said “Peace on Earth” or “May Peace Prevail on Earth.” In the late 80s and 90s, I was still using checks as a primary way of payment, so my message of peace was passing through many hands. Actually, I still have messages on my checks, but they are rarely used nowadays due to online banking.

In 1991, I bought my first car but I didn’t feel comfortable putting bumper stickers on it until it was paid off and had at least 100,000 miles on it. My Dad’s view on bumper stickers really made an impression on me. I started putting bumper stickers on the inside back window until finally they made their way to my bumper. I believe my first two bumper stickers were “Mean People Suck” (they really do) and “The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth.” Now, that we have two cars with over 150,000 miles on them, we send our message of peace and understanding to everyone who wants to stop and read our cars. Funny, I was able to get my folks to put a magnetic peace sign on their car a couple of years ago. They claim to enjoy it. I can’t lie it does give me great pleasure when I see it on their car.

Here’s what our cars looks like now.

Recently, I while walking around Ithaca and took pictures of interesting bumper stickers. Here’s what I found.

Have you read a interesting or funny bumper sticker lately? Please share and I will continue to share.