Ego on Board

So living in Phoenix, I’d largely forgotten about those “Baby on Board” signs that so many parent like to stick in the back of any car in which they might, once in a while, actually transport a young child. Since moving back to the L.A. area, though, I’ve seen quite a few of them. Not quite the plague that they once were, but more than a few.

God and I talked about this a bit and he explained to me that they’re so much more prevalent in L.A. because of the attitude here about ego. L.A. is a celebrity town. Many people here directly earn their living by catering to people with enormous egos and bank balances that match. So with so much of the local industry being ego-based there’s a definite tolerance for displays of ego. “Baby on Board,” at its essence is a display of ego. It’s the driver saying that their baby, and by extension their genes, is so important that hitting their car is even worse than getting in an accident would normally be. Not just their car would be damaged, the whole world would be damaged.

But, I argued,. you don’t see those signs on the cars of the rich and famous

Of course not, God told me, those people actually have well fed egos. It’s the people that have the spillover egos, the trickle-down egos, the egos without the accomplishments to justify them that need to proclaim their worth to anybody that comes near them. The rich and famous can get their egos stroked directly, the egos-without-portfolio get their strokes by seeing their own little signs and imagining the deference the other drivers are paying them. It’s a way they can say “pay attention to me” while imagining that they’re not demanding attention at all.

And I guess it works, because I just wasted a whole post talking about them.

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