GIRLS [WASH DISHES]

My almost girlfriend was getting big into girl power and the commercial wave of feminism lite that was currently in vogue. There were T-shirts, wallets and stickers for some off-the-shelf strongly held political belief. One sticker that was making the rounds was a white font on a black background rectangle that simply stated “GIRLS RULE”. I am pretty sure that having that sticker and the vapid banality of it single handedly set back women's rights by twenty years. As is the case with everything in my life I thought that a well placed joke would help everyone realize the essential absurdity of our existential crises and laugh at the gallows humor which is the human experience. This is not the first or last time I would make that mistake. I got some sticker paper and in drafting class wrote “WASH DISHES” in the same size, style and font in  a manner that would, at first glance, appear to be what the original sticker actually said. I printed out a whole sheet of them and cut them out carefully and during the next class period, while the school was otherwise occupied, I covered over all of the “RULE”s I could find with “WASH DISHES”.  Funny stuff right there, funny stuff. Well, I went to class and when I got out of the last class of the day I was going to tell some people about my comedy coup but before I could I noticed that there were a couple of really pissed people talking about death and dismemberment for somebody. It turns out that there were some of the Girl Power girls who had seen the stickers and unlike most feminist they didn't have a sense of humor about their politics. I was deciding to lay low for a bit and hold off on taking credit when an announcement came over the PA system that they were looking for anyone who had information about some vandalism to bumper stickers in the parking lot. That made up my mind and I met up with my livid girlfriend who was riled up about hillbilly misogyny and the kind of jerk who thought saying women should be in the kitchen, I pointed out it was a kind of funny send up of the sticker like that legged fish Darwin take on the christen fish bumper sticker.  She was not to be mollified and I decided to keep myself to myself and I never told her it was me who did it . Not ever. In fact I think the only person I ever told was my best friend Cole who did think it was funny.