Outside Counsel

My recent automotive misadventure has left us with a newer, fancier car and a bit of a dilemma.  The old Volvo was far from having acquired the broken-in look of an old tweed jacket, but it was on its way. It was in good shape overall, but it was clearly an older model, and its rear window testified to the higher educational aspirations of EGA and CLA. The Smith College sticker all by itself was a fine thing, but we also featured a Geneseo sticker from CLA's year and a half at my alma matter, and a sticker from Indiana University, where EGA had pursued graduate studies. Assuming that LCA elected to attend a school other than Smith we were looking forward to adding another; and it seems likely that CLA's graduate school program would have deepened our collection. By the time they were all through the Volvo would have been ready for leather patches on its elbows.

Now all of that is for naught, and we must rebuild. Of course we can replace the Smith sticker-- CLA has a semester and a half to go.  The question is, do we have to start our collection from scratch, or can we replace the stickers we had? I'm afraid I'm leaning toward scratch. The point of the rear window college sticker is, I think, to furnish a sort of annotation to a car. "Sure, I'm a ten year old beater," the sticker collection says, "but I'm a beater in the cause of our childrens' college careers". The sleek new Batmobile Volvo has no connection to the Athens of the Wabash-- EGA's degree was awarded nearly a year ago, and I doubt that we'll be driving to Bloomington any time soon.. Although I am a proud alum, Geneseo doesn't seem to have a place on our rear window either. I'm not even sure if we are entitled to a sticker from EGA's present school-- Indiana was arguably a reach, since we weren't paying for it. The one thing I know we won't be getting is a stick figure family. Or the Grateful Dead bears.