No Dice

So, I have this theory.

That there may be an indirect correlation between basic intelligence and junk dangling from people’s rear-view mirrors.

Essentially, the more Mardi Gras beads you have strung up in your Subaru, the less chance I want you constructing Macy’s parking garage or programming my PC. Don’t we have enough arenas for self-expression that our four-wheeled vehicles can martyr themselves to just being practical? Can’t they simply be an exoskeleton for transport?

It seems our Hondas and PT Cruisers have been morphed into the cluttered living rooms of the open road. People drape rabbit’s feet, crystals, dream catchers, metallic crucifixes, and those ridiculous furry dice their 4th graders snag in quarter-claw machines at dingy pizza joints.

But, the regurgitation of paraphernalia doesn’t end there. The mullet seeps around to the rear dash with choirs of stuffed Snoopies, grinning Garfields suctioned to the glass, and hairy felines with creepy bobbing heads. More often than not, I find myself staring at the likes of a deranged taxidermy display or a fantastical cartoon petting zoo while I’m bumper to bumper on the Eisenhower.

Somehow along the way, our cars became microcosms of who we are as individuals. Whether we like it or not that Prius screams worm-composting, cloth-bag toting, sans-deodorant wearing hippie. And that Lexus SVU has khaki-colored, pedicured, Estee-Laudered, private-school suburbanite written all over it.

Just as an ironed dress shirt can make or break an interview, the swinging of rabbit’s feet in your windshield may determine whether or not I find you worthy of a friendly merge. I offer no apologies. I am telling you outright. Flaunting the car bling is on par with sporting a pitted-out wife-beater to the movies or cut-off jeans to church.

So I ask you? What messages are you projecting about yourself when you dangle the dice? Frankly, you look dumb. I’d personally prefer to have my fellow stop-sign runners focused on the interstate rather than being mesmerized by their bouncy pink prisms.

Now, I’m not judging the decaying autumn maple chards littering your floor mats or criticizing the paint nicks on your passenger door. I view those love pats as normal wear and tear. But, I do wish to reintroduce the notion of “car etiquette”.

I’m even speaking to those of you who swallow the “scented leaf kool-aid” or swoon to the seductive stature of its more masculine cardboard cousin, the pine tree. You know who you are. You are desperate for your stinky interiors to exude subtle whiffs of sarsaparilla, orange sherbet, or Colorado mountain air. You crave that causal compliment from carpool friends, “Wow, your car smells so……..western.”

So you lost that lovin’ new-car-smell feeling. It happens to all of us. Don’t swallow the potpourri Prozac from your local 66. There has got to be something a little classier we can use to lavenderize our upholstery.

After all, those stuffed animals take a lot of shits.