On our most recent trip down to the Staunton area, where I got some update photos for Staunton Mall, among other things, we got an unexpected follow-up to something that we had done on a whim in the New Street garage in downtown Staunton on our September trip, which is where we park when we stay at Hotel 24 South, and then subsequently forgot about. Like many public parking garages, you occasionally find vehicles in there being stored long-term, or sometimes outright abandoned, such as this red Mitsubishi that we spotted in December 2020, which was wearing a thick layer of dirt (it’s since been moved).
More recently, a white Range Rover with an expired North Carolina plate on the second level of the New Street garage was one of those cases, with its having been in its space for a long enough time to be wearing a thick layer of dust and dirt. So in September, as we were leaving the New Street garage on the last day of our trip, I had an idea. I stopped the HR-V in front of it, got a napkin, wet the napkin a little bit, and then had a moment of fun with it, writing a message on the windshield.
(Be advised: some of the photos below this point depict somewhat crude humor that is not necessarily “safe for work”, so be judicious about where you are when you read this.)
Yep, I wrote “penis”, intentionally misspelled as “penus”. There’s a story behind this spelling. When I was a child, before I had actually seen the word in writing, that’s how I thought it was spelled. It made enough sense to me. Then I remember one time with a Madlibs pad, filling in all of the blanks with “penus”. I thought I was so edgy back then, at the age of five. Of course, it’s not like Elyse and I haven’t done the exact same thing in more recent times with various words relating to body parts or body functions and then laugh ourselves silly over the results, so it’s not like I ever really grew out of this (just saying). So I figured, I might as well carry that over to here.
Elyse, meanwhile, also joined in on the fun, getting her own napkin and doodling a message on the hood:
I thought that Elyse’s message was a little bit less refined than mine, but, you know, we’ll go with it. So we headed off and did the stuff that we were planning to do that day, and gave no further thought to the Range Rover.
Now, fast forward to December, when we made another trip down to Staunton. We had long since forgotten about our little bit of dirt writing, until we rounded the corner past where the Range Rover was parked. There it was, still proudly proclaiming “PENUS” from its windshield for all to see. And then we noticed something else: there was more stuff on the windshield now. Apparently, it just takes one person to prime the pump, and then everyone else joins in on the bandwagon. Even better was that they went further than I did.
My big “PENUS” message is still there, and then some folks added some additional graphics beneath it.
The hood, meanwhile, became a graffiti wall of sorts, with all kinds of messages and such on it. Kind of surprised that no one also added the “Cool S” symbol that middle schoolers like to draw. Elyse and I were both disappointed to see that her message had been wiped away. Apparently, someone didn’t think that it matched the aesthetic of the rest of the car?
“Payness!”
Let’s admit it – I was pretty proud of this. I apparently started a trend, and it warmed my little heart to know that there are people in Staunton who are just as immature as I am – possibly even more.
Woomy, on the other hand, though, didn’t see the humor in it:
“I don’t like that!”
Meanwhile, the next time that we’ll be down in Staunton will probably be March, and I wonder if this Range Rover will still be there then, and I wonder if it will have more messsages.