No less than an hour ago I drove my green ’99 Chev Lumina sedan home from work. Heading eastword with the sun behind me, I glanced in my rear-view mirror, like I do every day, checking for nearby traffic before changing lanes to get to the 172 East onramp. Today, however, I noticed that the thin film of dust clinging to my rear window had been disturbed by an oily finger. After safely changing lanes and merging with highway traffic, I raised my eyes again to more closely inspect the marks illuminated by the evening sun. Someone had written the single word “BITCH” in large capital letters in my window dust….MY window dust!
My first thought was wonder at who could possibly have done it and for what reason. I washed my car yesterday evening before it was washed anew by the torential downpours of a violent thunder storm (for which I hadn’t the foresight to check the weather forecast). From this, I reasoned that the author must have written the message sometime today. Perhaps the scription occured while I was parked in front of my parents’ home. However, I didn’t notice any marks in my windshield in the morning sunlight as I headed westward to work. It had to have happened while I was working. Somebody defaced the dust on my rear windshild in the quiet parking lot with infrequent pedestrian traffic.

So who could it be? A co-worker? An acquaintance who recognized my car in passing? A random driver overcome by road-rage at some stupid driving error I made? Perhaps I’m naive in thinking that I don’t have any enemies…maybe I really ticked someone off and they’re hunting me down. Or maybe it’s just some benevolent individual that wishes to communicate anonymously to me that I’m ornery….like one would tell an esteemed associate that they have bad breath or body oder–with anonymity to avoid embarassment. Maybe I am a bitch. I wonder if there’s a 12-step program to overcome my bitchiness. I’m sure acceptance comes first.

I was impressed with the fact that the word was written backwards so it could be read it in the reflection of the rear-view mirror. Someone actually left an encrypted message that only I, as sole driver of my car, could invariably read. Some time later, longer than I care to admit, I realized that the word was written forward from the outside, read backward from the inside, and translated forward again in the reflection. Duh.

Who knows…maybe the word has been there for a while and I didn’t notice or remember that I noticed. I didn’t really clean my windows when I hastily washed my car last night…maybe I went through this whole inner tourmoil weeks ago only to forget about it and re-live it again. Maybe it was just some kid.