I'm Going to Hell

I was at the Commissary yesterday on my weekly supply run for string cheese, hot dogs, and Diet Coke when I saw that someone had wedged a flier under the windshield wiper of my car. Fliers are a very popular form of advertising here in Okinawa. Every time a new apartment building opens in the neighborhood, someone sticks a flier under your wiper just in case you’re in the market to trade up. I’ve gotten so many rain-sodden cards reminding me that there’s an Easier Way to Get Your Car Inspected (Just Call Kinjo!) that I sometimes drive around with one stuck to the windshield for most of the day before I’m bothered enough to pull it off. It looked as if mine was the only car in the Commissary parking lot to have one, but I really wasn’t paying that much attention. I didn’t even look at it until I’d gotten the groceries put away.

Ah, but it’s a pamphlet, not a flier. The cover was no clue: “Party Girl.” I’ve seen posters lately for a new adult novelty shop carrying a line of “Women’s Lovely Friends” (whatever that is!) --- could be a promotion for that. Or maybe another of those “home party” schemes where you go to a friend’s house and buy stuff you don’t really need so that she can get a hostess gift.

Imagine my surprise when I realized what it was: a handy, pocket-sized tract warning me of the dangers of immoral behavior!

Why, I wondered, was I singled out for this timely warning? Then I remembered the bumper stickers.

When, against all of my single-girl oaths, I first found myself driving a minivan (you just can’t wedge three car seats into a sports car), I decided that if I was reduced to driving a Housewife-mobile, I would approach it as a giant canvas. So I started plastering my outsized, coolness-deficient vehicles with a rotating display of liberal iconoclasm. The current collection must have inspired this concern for the state of my soul. (I’m betting on the bellydancer sticker; everyone knows that belly dancing is only a step away from prostitution.) So, let’s examine what my car says about me:

Well, there’s a Japanese kanji that says “peace,”a sentence suggesting the practice of kindness, a sticker for a local group called “Hug the Earth” (self-explanatory, I think),

a symbol for Gaea (more Earth-hugging!),

a Sanskrit word for tolerance,

two drumming stickers, the word “bellydancer,” and the outlines of a family (with parents of opposite genders).

Clearly, this says …. no, wait …. I am going to hell! How could I have missed this before? Thank God some vigilant Christian pointed it out to me!

Now I have the opportunity to reform my life, so that I can later join all of my intolerant, environment-hating, rhythmically challenged friends in heaven.

Hang on --- those aren’t my friends. These are my friends.

In heaven all the interesting people are missing.

----Friedrich Nietzsche