As I wrote yesterday, I spent most of Sunday on Whidbey Island with Mr. Completely and Kiwi. It is physically possible to drive to Whidbey Island, but it is close to 50 miles out of the way for me, so I took one of the many ferry boats in the State of Washington fleet. While on the ferry ride home, I also ran into one of the many hippies that inhabit the Western Washington area.
You see, I have a full sized truck with a canopy top which basically has a 5×5 area that I have placed a few decals on. It isn’t a rolling billboard by any means, but there are six or seven small things I have attached to my truck. I don’t adhere stickers to the paint because that screws up the paint and when they fade, I want to be able to easily take them off.
I have a couple different ‘Support the Troops’ magnetic ribbons and two smaller “Keep My Soldier Safe� ribbons. One for the folks I know in uniform serving in a rocky and/or sandy place and one for the folks I know who used to wear the uniform but who are now private and working in a rocky and/or sandy place.
I also have one of Raging Dave’s “Molon Labe’ stickers riding high along with a selection of pro2A stickers from LifeLibertyEtc.com and an NRA cling on the canopy glass.
It was this one that got the conversation started.
After the ferry loads for the trip, most folks get out of their vehicles to go use the head or run around on the upper decks. She did.
I didn’t. I got lucky and received a spot on the side of the boat with ample light and proceeded to take advantage of it to read my copy of the latest edition of The Shotgun News that had arrived the day before.
I saw her getting out of her old VW Rabbit in the uniform of the hippie (peasant dress, sweater, head scarf, etc.) and walking towards the bow to the door to the upper deck. As she got to the car behind me, I saw her focus on the back of my truck and was waiting for a reaction.
I got more of a reaction than I was hoping for.
I saw the blank stare on her face turn into a scowl, which oddly enough, looked very natural on her face. She then walked up to my drivers door window and said “Excuse me.”
Those folks that have met me know that I am nothing if not a gentleman and I proceeded to fold up my Shotgun News and ask if I could help her. She said that she was offended by the sticker and asked if I had any clue how stupid it was. I proceeded to tell her that in my opinion, it spoke a very simple truth in four words.
Apparently, she thought I would cede the point to her immediately because the look of shock on her face was as if I had hit her in the face with a two-by-four (which I hadn’t).
She went into a rant about how violence creates violence, war is for people who don’t know how to negotiate (or some such BS) and I was waiting for the famous “You can’t hug a child with nuclear arms� drivel, but it never arrived. It probably would have except that as she got a couple sentences into her rant, I started unfolding my Shotgun News and that really made her mad.
Her last line something like “And stupid stickers like that one and stupid people like you will never understand and that really pisses me off!� and it was at full volume, so that folks still sitting in their vehicles around us were able to take notice.
I calmly folded my my Shotgun News back up and asked if it made her pissed off enough to try and hit me.
She said, and I quote “No, because you probably have a gun with you right now.�
So I replied “Isn’t it sad that all of the psychobabble you keep in your head just lost an argument to a bumper sticker?�
I swear, I thought she was going to spontaneously explode right there and I know I was smirking (because I couldn’t help it) as I unfolded my Shotgun News and rolled up my window, the conversation being done. She literally just stood there and was almost vibrating.
If I thought she could actually break my driver’s door window by herself, I would have done more than flip open my cellphone and set it on the dash.
After a dozen seconds or so, she walked away in a huff towards the door to the upper deck.
At the end of the boat ride when she walked past my truck to get to her car, I saw a look I haven’t seen since the time I brought home a car that I had promised the Analog Wife (then the Analog girlfriend) that I wouldn’t buy.
Sadly, Whidbey Island has a large and vocal community of folks like you describe. When we were doing our support the troops rallies, we’d see them drive by and give us the finger. The one you ran into (figuratively, sadly not literally) was slightly out of costume, so to speak. Normally they drive either a VW bus, or most commonly a Volvo station wagon, with a couple of good dents in the sides or doors, and one front fender a different color. Welcome to Whidbey!
Beautiful!
It’s amazing how self-destructive people can be. As if they hold such mighty wisdom that nobody else has the brain power to understand until they come along to save the rest of us– “Oh! It’s stupid! Damn! I wish someone had told me that sooner!”
This reminds me of the conversation spawned by that other sticker. Angry, angry people speaking in violent terms, dismissive of any other point of view, but so sure that they are the “party of tolerance and peace” that their own standards don’t apply to them. Fabricating stories about their ideological opponents, well beyond the bounds of reality. And if you dare to suggest that this might be the case, and that they should think about what they are saying, the kind of environment they are contributing to, you get nothing but chemical rage.
Excellent!! Kyle, *tanks* for that, “you get nothing but chemical rage.” Very nicely put.
Could just as easily have been members of my family.
The depth of emotion is a giveaway, though, a giveaway to the possibility that she might have enough emotion to perform duty for the OpFor, at least as a sapper, perhaps as a scout.
At some point, she will become a legitimate target. She isn’t at the moment, but that shouldn’t stop you from gatering intel, AK. I hope you wrote her license plate down.
If you wanted to get a bit more agressive, but still keep it under the weapons level, you could have shot a flash picture of her face. That, along with the licence plate number, is invaluable intel.
Intel, intel, and preparation. Those are the orders of business these days.
“Isn’t it sad that all of the psychobabble you keep in your head just lost an argument to a bumper sticker?�
Snicker.
Nicely done AK.. Nicely done indeed..
MikeG wrote:
“Normally they drive either a VW bus, or most commonly a Volvo station wagon, with a couple of good dents in the sides or doors, and one front fender a different color. Welcome to Whidbey!”
I drive a creamsicle orange ’73 VW camper bus with a white poptop. You ought to see the looks on the faces of the soldiers of the “Folk Song Army” when they see my NRA and North American Hunting Club Life Member stickers on the back window, and my buddy, Ozzy, a 95# American Staffordshire Terrier sitting in the passenger seat.
Priceless.
Oh. My.
That was PERFECT.
Bravo!
Hey, those buttons are lame. Everybody knows that real “Peace Through Superior Firepower” buttons use the B-52 outline to form the inner part of the peace symbol! 🙂
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