The other day I put a Grateful Dead sticker, the kind that looks like a college decal, across the back window of my car. No big deal, you'd think, except that I'm a balding, paunchy thirty-nine-year-old, and the car is a Mercedes-Benz 450SL. People don't think of Deadheads (if they think of them at all) in connection with exposed scalps and expensive German roadsters. The image is more likely to include hair in abundance, and a vehicle so close to the end of its useful life that a sign stating "this is not an abandoned car" is all that keeps it from being towed to the car pound.

When I decided to adorn the SL with its anomalous window dressing, my wife chalked it up to a combination of midlife crisis and a well-established penchant for overindulgence: anything worth doing is worth doing to excess. And maybe she's right. Maybe I'm responding to a heightened vision of mortality by trying to catch up on some of the missed opportunities of a youth spent in the sixties. If that's what my midlife crisis is about, so be it. There are far worse ways to cope with life's impermanence than getting together with friends and family, hitting the road for a week, and taking in four or five Dead shows.

But that doesn't explain the sticker. After all, I've been able to maintain many enthusiasms over the years, without feeling obliged to advertise them. In the sixties, when I was a conspicuously idealistic and moderately active college student, my car kept mum about it. These days "I'd Rather be Sailing" than doing almost anything else, but I don't need you to know it. And when I drive my jalopy I don't care whether or not the world is aware that "My Other Car is a Mercedes-Benz." Indeed, for years I've been openly scornful of the notion of using a car as a rolling billboard. I don't care that you "Brake for Animals" — unless you do it in front of me — nor am I interested in your voting, praying, or breeding habits. I'm not likely to "Come a-Knockin' " even if the van isn't "a-Rockin," and painful experience taught me long ago that beer drinkers do not make better lovers.

So why my sticker? Does it say that life is too short to spend it judging other people by their stickers? Maybe, but not to me. I still react to "Baby On Board" signs by reaching for the imaginary grenade launcher. Maybe I'm trying to tell the world that even though I drive a serious car I'm really just a regular guy. But I've been a regular guy for years and never felt the need to advertise it. Could it be that I feel the need to belong to something? There's certainly a strong sense of community amongst Deadheads, and at Dead shows I feel very much a part of a greater consciousness. But I don't take the car to shows, and here in Westchester the sticker sets me apart more than it includes me in anything.

I like simple answers; I believe in them. That's why, although there might be some validity to each of these explanations, none of them really rings true. What is true, at least for this old Deadhead, is that having the sticker on my Mercedes-Benz makes me feel good, plain and simple. It's been more than twenty years since my generation cried "If it feels good, do it!" This is 1988, and these are troubled times. Many of the things that used to make me feel good are — if not illegal, immoral, or fattening — then dangerous, expensive, or impossible. Nowadays I take my pleasure in smaller doses, with a quick glance over the shoulder and no questions asked. Seeing the skull-and-roses on my 450SL makes me smile; that's good enough for me.