"My Monrovia student will make your honor roll kid TAP OUT in less than 30 seconds." It sounds hypocritical to say that when I first heard of the alternative honor roll stickers ("My kid could kick the ass of your honor roll kid", etc.), I found them amusing. In my defense, I probably started seeing those when I was like, 13. Now, not only is the joke a little old, but you tack onto it an additionally stupid phrase - "tap out". I figured it had something to do with wrestling or whatever, and sure enough, urban dictionary refers me to MMA, or mixed martial arts. Fantastic. I don't think it would be surprising to anyone that I detest any event where the violence of the event far outstrips any demonstration of athletic ability, or indeed, any event where rednecks/misogynists/drunks gather in force. Those terms are kinda redundant, huh?
Going off topic briefly into other ways that people display messages via their vehicle, the other day a woman had festooned her back window with various baseball caps that had confederate flags and the word "rebel" on them. One of which was bright pink. Oh, and next to that one was a stuffed hamster. Because, you know, racists like cute stuffed animals and pink, too.
Growing up in a household where it was generally disapproved of reducing your car's value by adding anything permanent, I find bumper and window stickers almost categorically tacky, unless they are so tacky that they come back around to irreverently funny (e.g. political stickers from long defunct running pairings or just excessive amounts of stickers from all kinds of places on a car whose value no one even cares about). I'll make exceptions for people I like or causes I agree with, but for the most part I don't enjoy getting distracted from my driving by what are essentially Facebook status messages in car decal form.
I actually kind of dig the "My kid beat up your honor roll student" stickers, mostly because I was always sort of eye-rolly about the "My kid is an honor roll student" stickers in the first place. I should probably confess that it's because I always looked down on congratulations, rewards, and proud parents when kids got good grades. In my mind, everyone should get straight As and otherwise you were just stupid. Like, those kids who got MONEY for each of their As? Um, excuse me? I wasn't even jealous; I just thought they were pathetic. That said, I think MMA is god-awful, for the exact reasons you mentioned. I even went to an event in New York where two authors/ESPN people who wrote a book about it talked all about what it "really" is. Nope. It's stupid.
ReplyDeleteHahahahaha. I got money for my report cards. It wasn't an incentive, just an excuse for them to give me money on top of a healthy expectation that I would be getting those As no matter what. But yeah, there's no need to deface your car over it. Getting on the honor roll in a public school basically just means staying conscious for roll call.
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