It was a hot day and as Rebecca and I drove north on i70. I was looking straight ahead as I pulled up behind a beat up SUV with a bumper sticker extolling the virtues of Yoga. A hand poked out of the front window and flicked a cigarette.
In the passenger seat Rebecca craned to confirm the cigarette siting, "Is that person smoking?" she asked. "Doesn't seem to fit with their bumper sticker."
"True," I said as the light turned green and I accelerated to pass the SUV, my underpowered Suzuki Aereo struggling to hit 40mpg, "it's religion all the way down."
"What?" Rebecca asked.
"Oh, it's just something I've been thinking about recently. Everyone always says that there's no accounting for taste, but until recently it was hard for me to admit there were chain smoking Yoga enthusiasts. It just seemed too contradictory. The best model I've found for respecting those kinds of differences are to treat them like religions."
"Yoga isn't really a religion," Rebecca said. "And what's with all the way down? Is that a rip on the turtles?"
"Yeah, I just tack on the turtles bit because it's funny."
With the SUV slightly behind us, I quickly changed the topic, "Quick, can you see what the driver looked like? I'm curious what a chain smoking Yoga enthusiast looks like."
Rebecca swiveled around in her seat to look, "I can't see, there's too much reflection in the windshield."
"Darn, I guess it will have to remain a mystery."