How’m I Driving?

by Rebecca Schoenkopf

A few years ago, on Memorial Day, I was driving down Garden Grove Boulevard when I saw a hand-lettered sign stuck in someone’s front yard. “Our freedom,” it warned darkly, “belongs to the troops.”

I got what they were trying to say—freedom isn’t free, and cetera, and without the troops if you lived here you’d be home by now speaking German—except it accidentally came out all fascisty.

I hate when that happens! There you are, just trying to make a simple point about the sacrifices our military men and women have made for us, and all of a sudden, you’ve confused them with Pinochet’s guard! If it belongs to them, they can take it away. And by the way, you are an idiot.

Sometimes I miss Orange County. There was always so much to get mad about.

For instance, let’s say you are at the bowling alley, and it is 2004, and you see my friend Skeith’s Mercedes, and it has a John Kerry bumper sticker on it. It might make you so mad that you take a baseball bat and smash all the windows and mirrors. Or maybe you are driving down the freeway, and you see a cute VW sorority girl convertible, with a small woman driving, and it too has a Kerry bumper sticker. You will probably be so mad that you stand up outside the driver side window, while managing to floor the gas, and scream at me like a lunatic that you will kick my fucking ass fucking Communist Kerry voter.

It’s not just Orange County; it’s just mostly Orange County. Once I was in the Sierras with my boy and had an Angelides bumper sticker showin’, and a man yelled something unintelligible, so I flipped my shit and followed him until he parked at a hardware store and scurried inside like a rat, because he can yell things at women and children driving alone but is too much of a pussy when faced with 5-feet-2-inches of polite girl smiling (fakely) and saying sweetly (and thus fakely), “I'm sorry, I didn't hear what you said!” to do anything but run and shout over his shoulder, “Angelides is a Communist! Too bad you didn't know that!”

At that point, of course, and as sweet as sugar kisses, I said, “Well, I'm a Communist too, so that works out great!” And then he said, all nasty and mean, “Why don't you go back to Germany!” before he hurried inside to escape anyone actually standing up to him.

Driving around L.A. with an Obama sticker doesn’t have anything like the same kind of thrill—if nobody’s threatening you with violence for casting a vote, if nobody’s getting all Ahmadinejad on your ass, why bother announcing it?

This weekend, I went to Thousand Oaks, to see some old high school friends of my sister’s. They’re teetotalling vegetarian artists, and we ate delicious vegetables and threw the babies around the pool and hiked up Tarantula Hill to see the fireworks and slept on the floor in their guest house and had the best time ever because it didn’t feel a thing like Thousand Oaks, the city I left at 18 (and three weeks) vowing never to be caught dead there again. Thousand Oaks, I’d always explained to people, was like a very small Orange County, and I was, as is often the case, perfectly right. Then the men got naked for night swimming (my son, who’s 15, kept his shorts on) and all of a sudden decided to compose for us a water ballet in honor of the Founders, and it was spectacular and we howled and applauded. First things first, of course, they gave themselves a name imagineered by my son: The TO Jefferson Ballet Squad. All of this only serves to remind me of the bumper sticker that was attached to my car for me in my driveway in Santa Ana, right over my John Kerry. It was neatly lettered, drawn ruler-straight and evenly spaced, attached to my rear end with packing tape. “Love a gay,” it read, “ARE A GAY!”

A while back, I went up to Santa Rosa to visit friends, and saw a woman in the Trader Joe’s parking lot—where I had stopped to fetch a bag of treats like the best house guest I am—who had a bumper sticker that read “I MISS Ronald Reagan!!!” Oh, how I laughed and laughed at the loneliest woman in Northern California.

But good for her, really, dancing to her own retarded drummer, and not letting those NorCal hippies muzzle her particular brand of crazy. Lady, please to enjoy some freedom, and vote however you like.

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