Finding a note on your car windshield is an instant panic.
It’s like spotting a cockroach under the kitchen sink. If someone bothered to scrawl a message and tuck it under your wiper blade, it is unlikely to read, “Have a nice day!”
The anonymous scribe may have noticed a flat tire. Maybe they dented a fender. They might offer a colourful thumbs down on your parking. They might declare it time for a car wash. They may mock your vehicle.
(Tesla owners can expect some unsolicited “Heil Elon” notes this year.)
Or maybe the windshield bulletin is an ominous nod to pop culture.
One British man recently returned to his car to find a paper. On the front were three shapes: circle, triangle, square. Fans of South Korean dystopian TV already know where this is going. The back of the note was an invitation to join a real-life “Squid Game.”
Yes, the Netflix hit was fiction. But what if some lunatic is tickled by the prospect of luring strangers to a park to play children’s games.
Winner gets a prize. Losers are killed.
“Slender Man” was a horror movie. But a decade ago, two 12-year-old girls led a friend into the woods and fatally stabbed her to appease the Slender Man. Do not write “Candyman” three times and leave it on a windshield — it will scare the living daylights out of the driver.
Evolution of the windshield note: from road rage to pen rage to creepy invites.
So today I am calling upon all mobile scribblers to honour the original genre. No invitations to a real life “Fight Club.” Also, my windshield is not a billboard for free advertising. Knock it off with the invites to a new club opening.
I am an old man. Invite me to bingo night.
While we’re at it, enough with the fortune teller flyers. If my car is parked at Loblaws, I already know my future. It’s chicken breast, mashed potatoes and whatever else my wife jotted on the list she tucks behind the arm of my glasses.
A windshield note is the original DM. A bumper sticker relays your message to the world. A windshield note reveals what the world thinks of you. A windshield note is part passive-aggressive shaming, part righteous indignation. Consider this example from a few years back: “Parking 101: Don’t do it in front of someone’s driveway dumbass. I assume you suck at life.”
Can you imagine the notes left on Donald Trump’s cars in the ’80s: “Hey, dipstick, you parked on my cabbage patch.” “Why are your windows tinted with orange glitter?” “YOU RAN OVER A VALET AND THEN JUST WALKED INTO THE BISTRO!”
Another windshield note that lives in perpetuity on the web included a doodle of a pooch and this message: “I am giving you this dog, his name is Spot. I thought you might want him, as you seem to be trying to take as many spots as possible. I hope this helps.”
That is the ideal sardonic tone. Though there are times when agitation overwhelms the writer into a tirade: “Hey F—-er, Fix your car or stop setting off the alarm. Every day past the tenth, I will key your s—- for every time it goes off. F—k you, F—k you.”
Then there are notes from bystanders turned citizen officers: “I totally watched you hit that car and leave. The police are on the way. Have a good one!”
The flip side of this is when the wealth gap elicits rationalization. Someone once left this note: “I hit your car, I’m sorry! There’s only a scratch on the back left panel but because you looked rich, I’m not leaving my number. Sorry!”
Sometimes food is involved. A resourceful writer once smeared peanut butter across a windshield to finger scrawl the scolding message. Another person tucked slices of bread under the wiper blades as a bribe to “stop parking here.”
Some notes are hilariously random: “There were two squirrels mating on your car, just to let you know.”
While lovely windshield notes are as rare as a corpse flower, they exist. Last fall, a camper at Yosemite National Park found a letter on his vehicle from another camper. The writer praised the man’s deft trailer parking and the behaviour of his children. He said he loved hearing the campfire tales and laughter.
The writer ended with: “From one dad to another, you are killing it. Keep it up.”
That’s how you do it. Stick to the basics. A windshield note is when you want to register a complaint, offer a compliment or alert a dipstick he needs to go to LensCrafters because he can’t see the parking spot lines. It is not for soliciting or creepy invites to an improv of “Texas Chain Saw Massacre.”
Long live the windshield note.
