I brake for wine!

I hate the science fair. Pretty awful statement coming from a former science teacher, but it's true. I have spent the last three weeks, and the last few feverish days, helping #1 and #2 complete their projects. Notice I said helping them complete their projects, since again, as a former teacher, I refuse to do their projects for them. It has been a blast getting them to choose projects that were not simply magic tricks ("Over my dead body are you doing a baking soda volcano") and getting them to understand scientific procedure (""Hypothesis is a fancy word for guess") and standing over them as they painfully hunt and peck on the keyboard to type out their reports(I literally had to sit behind #2 and whisper "space" between each word), and it all culminates today when they display their work and demonstrate for their classes. Terror crying began for #2 last night. So, having dumped them, their poster boards and their various props off, I am D-O-N-E.

All the kids will get a ribbon for participating, since in this day and age you get a ribbon for successfully wiping your ass, and, of course, there will be no actual "winner". This might disappoint some, since they will lose out on the opportunity to have a "My child won the XYZ School Science Fair 2011" bumper sticker on the back of their van. Have any of you noticed that bumper stickers and magnets have gotten slightly out of control? Yes, this is the woman who once had magnetic flames on the side of her minivan, but that kind of coolness is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the van-exterior-as-biography phenomenon.

It all started innocently enough. Remember those "Baby On Board" signs that first reared their ugly heads in the 80's? This allowed paranoid new parents to alert other drivers ,who do not give a shit, that there is an infant in the car. Then colleges, wanting to up bookstore sales, started selling those rear window stickers. Parents of teenagers, having slaved away for twelve years to make sure Junior did his homework, and driven him to candy stripe at the hospital to ensure he had a wide enough variety of extra-curricular activities, want everyone stuck behind them in traffic to know of their achievement. Then we started seeing bumper stickers declaring one of the vehicle's passengers was an honor student, or a good citizen and things started to get ugly.

There are all kinds of "My child is..." stickers - student of the month, spelling bee champ - to the point they made a sticker mocking it that reads "My kid can kick you honor student's ass". And the sports. My particular favorite are the three-dimensional baseballs, basketballs and hockey pucks that are made to look like they have been thrown through the window, complete with surrounding glass cracks. Also popular, are the silhouette magnets. Akin to Rorschach tests, it takes you a minute to figure out the black shape you are looking at is a boy up at bat. I have seen ballerinas, lacrosse players and even equestrian rider silhouette stickers. Do they make one for math club, of a kid with a calculator?

After we have learned everything we need to know about the kids, we then get the scoop on the family at large. Remember when those white oval stickers with black letters were only for European cars with IRL being Ireland, and GB being Great Britain, etc.? Now every town and hamlet in the U.S. has it's own sticker and you can spend hours trying to figure out what the abbreviations mean. I swear on my life I saw one in the A&P parking lot this week that read CWR - Civil War Reenactor.

The back of the car is a prime spot for the middle-aged suburban athlete's need to toot their own horn. 26.2, 13.1, 5K, and 10K stickers abound. What's next? "I go to Zumba" stickers? What do you want, a cookie? You work out. Yay, you.

Then there is the Queen Mother of all car stickers. You've seen them. The white line, stick figure drawings of every member of the family. Just from waiting at a red light, you now know this family is comprised of a mom who does yoga (or runs, since, again, SHE IS FIT!), a daughter who talks on the phone while carrying a purse, a son who plays baseball, one who does karate, a dog, a cat and a fish. Oh, and the dad. In an act of desperation to capture his down-time essence, he is pictured holding a golf club, pushing lawnmower, or waving a flag bearing the logo of his favorite sports team. I don't suppose they make a male sticker sitting on the couch holding the remote.

The question is, why do we care? Why this pressing need to express ourselves on the back of moving vehicles? Is this an epidemic need for validation from strangers? Must women at home define themselves to the world in such boiled down images? I don't have the answers, but I do think it is curious that so many women (I am making broad assumption here, but I think I can safely say no man is ordering a stick figure of himself carrying a briefcase) feel the need to advertise what it is they do and who it is they are, if only in the broadest strokes.

All I can say is, since the flames have been removed, you know my van will be free of any adornment until I am pressured into slapping on one of those honor student stickers, should my kids earn one. There will definitely be no stick figure family since I'm sure they make one with a mother holding a glass of wine, but even I can't go there.