This Car Has Been Jacked

True Story.

They say you can tell a lot about a person by the type of car that they drive. A coworker was downtown and saw a car that had writing in the back windshield. It read:

"Attention police. If an old white guy isn't driving this car, it's been jacked again."

For the moment, let's ignore the potential age-ist/racist/sexist implications and assume that "old white guy" is purely descriptive. What, then, can we tell about the driver of this car?

Well, for starters, the owner is going to be elderly, caucasian, and male. That's sort of a gimme. What else is there? The car has been stolen before and recovered. Possibly, it's been stolen and recovered more than once (hence "again"). So the owner probably lives or works in a not-so-great neighborhood. Maybe the neighborhood used to be better, but has gone downhill and the man, who's lived there all his life, doesn't want to move. Or maybe he's on a fixed income and can't afford to move.

So that's what we can get from content, but what about the language? Use of "jacked" instead of "stolen" implies that the car was taken at gunpoint, rather than disappeared from a lot. If that's the case, the owner would have seen the thieves, and that probably inspired him to put a description of himself on the vehicle. We can surmise, then, that the thieves were probably youthful and non-white, and that the owner doubts that future thieves would be elderly and white. "Attention police" might indicate that, even though the car was recovered, he had trouble dealing with the cops.

And what can we say about the fact that he wrote a message at all? It's clever, but it's not very dignified. Clearly the value of the vehicle is more important to him than the embarrassment of driving around with that sign on the back. Of course, I say all this without knowing anything about the make, model, or condition of the vehicle.

And, to be fair, this is all conjecture. It could just as easily belong to an African-American woman whose neighbors have a wicked sense of humor.

Have a good weekend.