#bumper stickers that scream i have an eight grade education and a lot of misplaced anger

[ersatzpenguin]

Something that I think gets lost in all the internet bluster from bigots is the fact that most bigots are quiet—some of them can even be polite. They won’t say the things they think about you or your loved-ones to your face. And that honestly bothers me more in some ways.

A short story:

When we moved into our current house, and met our neighbor across the alley for the first time, she seemed surprisingly cold and distant. But, try as we might, we couldn’t pin down why. We quickly learned that she was good friends with the couple that lived in the house before us, and figured she must have just been sad to lose her friends. So, we went out of our way to be friendly and good neighbors. We were new to the city, and if she wanted friends, we were certainly looking for them. But, nothing changed.

In fact, over time, we noticed that she’d started actively avoiding eye contact with us—sometimes going so far as to act like we were not even there. For example, on a couple occasions her dog ran across the alley into our garage to say hello. When this happened, she’d tell the dog, “Former Owner 1 and Former Owner 2 don’t live there anymore, you can’t go over there”—all while ignoring our assurances that it’s okay, and we love dogs. Like, not really even replying or acknowledging us.

By this time, the only reason I could think of for her apparent disdain for us is the fact that we’re queer. But, she’d never said anything along those lines to us, and we live in a very queer-friendly neighborhood (in some ways, the “young gayborhood” in Minneapolis). So, wanting to believe the best about people, I figured I was wrong, and maybe we had done something we weren’t aware of to upset her—maybe right as we were moving in.

But, it bugged me. I don’t need to be friends with my neighbors by any means, but some sort of friendly communication seems necessary—after all, you want your neighbors to know they can talk to you about turning your music down instead of just calling the cops, etc. So, after we got to know our other neighbors better, I asked them if they knew anything about what was going on or if there was something we had done we weren’t aware of. While one hinted at her having said some “weird things,” most of them just affirmed that she’s not worth being friends with, has literally called the cops on another neighbor for noise without saying anything to them first, and has generally been a bit of a pain to have as a neighbor. She’s also apparently bragged about how the plants in her front yard discourage loitering. Hearing this, I thought to myself, “Fair enough. She’s just an antisocial jerk. I can handle that.”

And that’s how I thought of the situation for the last year or so. I had honestly gotten to the point where I felt bad for her—living alone, not seeming to ever have friends over or anything resembling a social life, just her and her admittedly much more charismatic dog. C’est la vie.

That is, until yesterday—when my partner pointed out she has a new sticker on her trash can. One of these:

And… there was my answer. She’s just a bigot. I spent multiple years worried we had somehow offended her without knowing what we did, trying to be as friendly as possible—and all that time and energy was for nothing because she’s one of those “‘Adam and Eve,’ not ‘Amanda and Eve’” weirdos.

Don’t get me wrong, I kind of like that she doesn’t feel like she can actively spout her nonsense to others—it speaks to the sort of community we have that the best she can manage is a poorly designed and thought-out bumper sticker on her trash can. I’m just frustrated that I spent so much of my time and energy worrying about her feelings before realizing she wasn’t worth it.