A Stickery Situation

Today I got Black Beauty washed and had them scrape off last year’s city vehicle stickers from the inside of the windshield with a razor. I needed to make room for the new stickers, which I recently purchased at the currency exchange.

Then I went home and began the excruciating process of positioning my new city and residential zone parking stickers IN THE EXACT RIGHT SPOT in the lower right-hand corner of the windshield. I can think of no activity more exacting, more nerve-racking, more likely to bring on a fit of self-inflicted rage. This is an entire year of sticker viewing we’re talking about. They must be perfectly perpendicular. They must be precisely aligned, straight as an arrow, with just the slightest and most symmetrical line of space between the two. My God, it is stressful.

And so, with one trembling hand holding the stickers inside the car, I twisted my torso slowly around to the front of Black Beauty to inspect placement. Every muscle tensed, I began pasting—millimeter by millimeter—the stickers onto the glass.

I stood back. I inspected the results.

For the rest of this week I will reflect admiringly upon my sticker placement skills while walking past cars with their new stickers haphazardly slapped on, bubbled, wrinkled and torn. I will tell myself that if a man picked me up for a date with his vehicle sticker so randomly applied, I would know everything I needed to know right then and there. If he also wore a gold rope necklace, I would probably just walk right back inside.

P.S. Quotes of the week:

1. My friend Tim Reilly, upon spotting an overly exuberant male guest at the annual sun deck party of a certain Chicago health club: "Wow, look at that. I bet he's hung like a Tic-Tac."

2. My brother Lee, signing off from a phone conversation last night: "Hey Emma, give me a call tomorrow when you're at work. I'm gonna be kinda bored."

P.P.S.

Dear Midnight Bandit,

Apparently Black Beauty was looking a little too stunning after her bath yesterday, and you couldn't resist the temptation to see what treasures might await within her super-shiny confines. I can't imagine why you didn't want the most recent issue of Cooking Light magazine from the passenger door panel, but I hope you enjoy the barely operational 2nd generation iPod with the scratched screen--particularly my extremely popular Haute Living playlist. Track 12 is really quite soothing. Toolbag.

Shown above: Black Beauty's driver-side window shattered on the ground, still mostly adhered by tint sticker.