On Mother’s Day, as we left Angeltown to visit our favorite restaurant, a pickup truck passed us on the highway bearing a bumper sticker which proclaimed, “My other toy has t1ts.”
(I am a prude, but my real issue for the creat1ve spe11ling is that I don’t want search engines to pick up the correctly-spelled word. I already get an inordinate number of hits for “excited angels,” and that bothers me.)
My Patient Husband and I were both unsettled by the bumper sticker. But in reality I think we need to thank this gentleman for alerting the women of the world as to what they can expect if they date him. To whit:
- That he considers his Ford 250 to be a toy, and therefore doesn’t take his driving seriously.
- That he considers women to be frivolous, without feelings, and unworthy of respect.
- That he has no respect for a woman’s body parts and refers to them in a derogatory fashion.
- That he has no respect for a woman’s feelings because he feels free to degrade her by talking about her as “a toy” on the back of his vehicle.
- That he sees the need to shock total strangers or else does not care if they are upset by what is commonly considered vulgar language.
That’s a lot of mileage to get out of one eight-by-three sticker, no?
My Patient Husband wondered aloud why there’s a subculture in America which encourages men to act like pigs. (He wants me to tell you: on behalf of all men everywhere, he would like to apologize.)
I’m trying to imagine a guy bragging to his male friends about his bumper sticker, laughing it up over a beer during a commercial break while watching football. I wondered if the woman in question (if she exists at all: she might not) felt degraded. But then again, it’s entirely possible that the “toy” referred to in the bumper sticker just rolls her eyes at the guy’s juvenile behavior and takes a “what can you expect?” attitude about him. She may not respect him either. She doesn’t expect any better from him, so he doesn’t work hard to meet her expectations. Perhaps they deserve one another.
All this leads to my final conclusion about what that bumper sticker means: that the man who put it there has no respect for himself. That he has no expectations (and hence no realistic chance) of forging a lasting bond with a partner whom he considers his equal. He will never struggle to win the heart of a woman he feels lucky to be with, and in effect, when hard times come, he will have no one to lean on, no one who has his back (other than those equally-shallow beer-drinking buddies who laughed at the ‘t1ts’ line).
When he wants to get someone’s opinion, will it be from his “toy”? When he’s unsure about a difficult choice (to find a new job, to relocate) will he consider asking his “toy” or will he find himself alone? When he needs to open his heart, will he open it to his “toy”? Eventually he’ll wonder about that hollow in his life.
He’ll probably try to fill it with another toy.
Won’t you feel silly if you find out that the guy is simply an avid birdwatcher whose “other toy” is simply a life-size diorama of a family of birds from the genus Lophophanes.
There was a man who lived in my apartment building. Past tense because, after being told and being told and being told that he had set his apartment up to be a nasty fire hazard, he had an apartment fire.
Lucky for him he was out, so he lost the apartment and everything in it, but he’s fine. He’s now taking what little is left out, one shopping cart at a time, once a week, and paying full rent while doing so. He thinks he’s “getting even” with the landlord by doing this, because the landlord evicted him and the insurance sued him.
Meanwhile renovations are under way and by the time they’re done, he’ll have gotten the last of his stuff out. The landlord acts dutifully annoyed, while collecting rent on an apartment that’s in no condition to show to a new tenant.
In any case, he used to be with a beautiful, intelligent, charming, and absolutely fabulous lady who deserved oh so much better than him. He introduced me to her with the phrase, “This is my girlfriend. She’s stupid.” I wanted to reply, “Clearly. Why else would she be with you?” She finally left him, hopefully for a decent gentleman.
He tried to treat me the same way, and found out how sharp my tongue can be. He’s obviously used to women with no sense of boundaries or self-respect, and who accept his abusive nature, and the really sad part is he finds them. There are people, men and women, who don’t honor themselves and don’t feel worthy of being treated kindly or with dignity and people, men and women, who are more than happy to walk all over them.
FWIW, if you Google “excited Angels” you get a ton of links to the baseball team.
Also, if you Google “excited angles” you get a lot of enthusiastic math and construction advice.
Yep, very nice of him to advertise himself like that. Same with the occasional older boys on the way to school. I loudly say to Daughter, “Aren’t you glad that when you grow up and make lots of money, you’ll have someone better to spend it with?”
As for the apartment fire guy? What is it with some people, that they insist on hurting others, and don’t see that it’s hurting them instead? They just don’t get it, even when it’s obvious, like when a credit card company annoys you, so you pay off the other cards first — they end up getting more of your money, which they don’t find annoying at all.
Amen to that, Ivy and Cricket! Cutting off a nose to spite the face hurts only that person. And just as those guys are blind to how stupid they are being, sometimes the women start out that way, too.
I almost let it happen to me. Not because I don’t respect myself but because I was naive and in denial about what was really going on. Praise God that I’m not a total idiot and He sent me the man that I really needed. 🙂
I wonder if his “other toy” is self-inflatable?
I got a million of ’em, folks.
Sincerely,
Strange Wind ~ Notoriously dismissive since 1971. Or so.
I thought of your blog and started laughing when I noticed one of my desk toys has *ahem*. It’s a plastic ewe.
I apologize as well. (Hey, not all men are pigs.) This guy is a misogynistic dummy. The deal is this….do unto others as they would do unto you. Shame.