Armed with love

After our last seminar I was pretty pumped. I thought my car looked sweet and was excited about driving it around. I only really thought about the impact of my stencil decisions enough to register that promoting hand guns to my at-risk youth client population was going to be a problem. No sooner had I left campus did I notice the questioning stares. I stopped at Agway to pick up chicken feed on my way home and I was accosted by a middle aged man in the parking lot.
"What the hell is that all about?" he asked.
Oh shit! Was I supposed to have had a purpose in my art project? Honestly, I had only really thought about the aesthetic value and whether or not the damned stuff would actually come off. After reassuring him that I was not in fact in a gang he finally seemed to back off. Only after however he had regaled me with tales about his own gang days in the seventies in "the village" where he had been "armed with love" (gag me with a spoon!!!!)
Anyway, that sealed the deal, not wanting even one more interaction remotely like that I was determined to get home, ignore the weird looks and wash my car. I made it home and crashed out on my bed exhausted. About twenty minutes later I could hear Ana one of our renters walking by the house talking to her boyfriend.
"What is this about?" she said. "It looks kinda cool but what is she trying to say?"
"I cannot believe she would do something like this to her car, what if she wants to sell it?"
Mind you this is someone I consider to be like family, who knows me really well. At this point I am not sure whether to go outside and yell at her for thinking I would permanently paint my car or reassure her that in fact I was not trying to say anything!I ended up doing nothing except crawling under the covers.
I washed the car the next day before work, but since I was in a rush I only had time to take off the worst offenders; the guns. After that people still seemed to constantly harass me but at least I did not meet with the same sense of indignation and confusion. I can honestly say that I will never paint my car again and I will also never underestimate the power of communicating one's identity through vehicle ownership.