JESUS IS MY _________

I was driving behind an elderly lady in what I believe could accurately be called a "monkeyshit brown" late seventies Buick. Or maybe metallic monkeyshit brown is better. Maybe this particular monkey had been snacking on some metal chips or something. I don't know. But the point is that here on the peninsula, there are many, many such elderly folks whose schedule is a little less hectic than most. Hence, with the slow driving. This gave me plenty of time to see that her license plate frame declared proudly JESUS IS MY MAGNET.

Wait, I thought, being the sharp individual that I am. JESUS IS MY MAGNET makes little or no sense, though it does sound kind of cool. Maybe she means that JESUS is the center of her life, and in that way like a MAGNET? She would be the iron filings that scientist types sprinkle on magnets to show you the concept of flux, which is really, really important to your everday life. Or maybe she was expressing a subversive atheist view wherein JESUS was indeed her MAGNET, but they were approaching each other from opposite poles, forever doomed to repel each other in a fragile dance of longing and impossible salvation.

I sped up to seventeen miles an hour on Junipero Serra Boulevard, edging up on her bumper, and realized the MAGNET portion of the message only looked like MAGNET. Now it looked more like WAGNER. That's better...JESUS IS MY WAGNER.

Hang on. That's not right either. Was she some crazed, confused, classical music listener?

JESUS IS MY HANGER? BANGER? ORANGUTANGER? LAPLANDER?

It was no use. She sped up to twenty-one miles an hour, and I was left wondering what JESUS IS, as she disappeared over the horizon.