My Foxy Car

I have fox ears on my car. Her name is Kitsune, and she is a beautiful coppery orange color. A month after I bought her (two years ago today!) I found a website where you could purchase a plastic fox tail to attach to her rear wiper blade so that every time she cleans her window, her tail wags. And then a few months ago, I found a vendor on Etsy selling fluffy fur ears that attach to the roof of the car with two high power magnets. So now if the weather permits and I don’t plan to go on a highway, Kitsune wears fox ears all around town. And the responses have been quite amusing.

Some people just love to see her ears. Parents with their children walking by in the parking lot point to them and the family all grins at each other. I will see people laughing in the driver’s seat as they drive by. I also get a few sneers and eyerolls and grumpy faces, but the happy faces make it worth it. What fascinates me is the amount of people who just miss seeing them at all.

I’ll drive by a line of traffic slowly, looking in the front window of each car, and some people are looking the other way, staring down at their phones, or simply stare straight ahead, not seeing what is right in front of them.

And here’s the thing…it’s not that I think what these people are doing is wrong. We all find ourselves daydreaming as we go through our days, distracted. It’s all part of being human. But this little experiment of mine, seeing who notices and who doesn’t, has really driven home to me that there is just so much in our daily experiences that we miss. There are so many small wonders in life we simply never see if we aren’t paying attention.

It’s human nature to not be able to absorb all of our sensory surroundings mindfully in the moment one hundred percent of the time. There will always be something we miss. But what if the universe…what if magic…is taking the time to send us little messages each day that we are completely oblivious to because we just aren’t paying attention? Let’s all agree to try to slow down, look around, and smile at the car with the fluffy orange fox ears.