2009-02-23 - 8:46 p.m.

�����Driving down the highway (or freeway or heck, the expressway if you're like that) you no doubt come across your fair share of bumper stickers and magnetic statements of support (or judgmental admonishment - same thing). Now, I'm not about to go off the rails on some sort of venomous soapbox about the ridiculousness of those magnetic ribbons that adorn so many cars. That would be wrong. And sinful. Sinfully redundant. Because I already did so right here. That's so five years ago. My God. That was five years ago? Let me check that again. Yeah. Five years. And I started this here law blog 2 years before that. So . . . if I do my math right - that's 7 years this April. That's a lot of typery.

�����Anyway, before I so rudely interpolated myself. You see a lot of bumper stickers. Many times you see college bumper stickers. Obviously, around here, you see a lot of UNH, PSC/PSU, KSC, UMass, BC, BU, etc. Often times you see a (clearly) used car that has attempted to peel a bumper sticker off from the previous owner. It always strikes me funny too, because the sticker they're trying to peel off is usually something quite prestigious. They're trying to razor off an NYU or West Point to make more room for their, "I don't brake for Yankees Fans" bumper sticker. [It's a waste of a bumper sticker. Yankees Fans don't even brake for Yankees Fans. - Ed.] But they can't seem to get the whole sticker off. Because they're not supposed to. Someone decided to leave their mark. And that mark is going to do it's damnedest to not be unleft. Long after you gave up that Chevy Cavalier, it still tells the world that you climbed Mt. Washington with it. That Mt. Washington sticker is as much a part of your story as the actual act of climbing Mt. Washington in your car was.

�����A 9th grader tags the side of the loading dock at the automotive high school.

�����A love-sick 25 year-old retail clerk makes a mix CD for the girl down the hall at the Sunglass Hut.

�����A teenage runaway writes home with no return address to her younger sister to explain the sights and ideas behind the first protest she has attended.

�����An expectant first time grandmother transcribes on to an index card her apple cake recipe for her daughter-in-law.

�����A 33 year-old servicewoman adopts a dog she found in a warzone and brings him to a new home; her old home.

�����A fisherman carves two circles into tree bark so he can remember this spot next season.

�����A tattoo that no one can see for a 50th birthday that no one will celebrate.

�����A snapshot with some strangers you met at the bowling alley.

�����A cheap, plastic flag shoved gingerly into the thawing cemetery ground.

     A moldy orange left by a former co-worker in the back of the office fridge.

�����A high school ring that wasn't yours, doesn't fit you, and can't be parted with.

�����A disc-shaped scar from a long abandoned immunization.

�����A status update on Facebook letting the world know that the adoption has been finalized.

�����A singed corner on the back page of a 1947 Laconia telephone book.

�����A collection of words in white type, on blue screen - rubber banded across the years as but a small skewed window to how life was, is, and is going to be.

�����Everyone leaves their mark somehow. They're not all going to be prize winning pigs, so why be content with a mark? Why not marks? Why not as many marks as possible? Why not as many marks as impossible? Who's to say what's possible?? Other people? Let them worry about their marks. You concentrate on putting your initials in the sidewalk.

�����As many sidewalks as possible.

���������It's been real,

���������������Lakeport Millionaire

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