My Mummy Sticker
To everyone reading this post: are you mad at me?
Ron Swanson once said: “I won’t publicly endorse a product unless I use it exclusively and I really believe in it. My only official recommendations are U.S. Army-issued mustache trimmers, Morton Salt, and the C.R. Laurence Fein two-inch ax style scraper oscillating knife blade.”
I too have only three public endorsements: Dr Pepper, Alamo Drafthouse movie theaters, and Super Yaki.
Super Yaki is a small brand based out of Houston, TX. They sell apparel for movie lovers. But not just any apparel for just any movie lovers. They cater to the niche and to the elite. Here are some of my favorite Super Yaki products:
In late 2019, I saw a hat online that said “a film by Nora Ephron.” Nora Ephron wrote When Harry Met Sally, and wrote/directed Sleepless in Seattle, Julie & Julia, and my undefeatable favorite movie You’ve Got Mail.1 She is my favorite director, my guiding light, my spiritual grandmother. I needed the hat. But it was out of stock. I emailed the company that made the hat, and the fine folks at Super Yaki got back to me almost immediately to say they were restocking! Perfect products AND perfect customer service??? I’ve never looked back.
One of my favorite things I’ve gotten from Super Yaki is this bumper sticker:
I love The Mummy. This is not news; it’s part of my personality. I would always rather be watching it. But when Super Yaki first released this sticker, I didn’t buy it because I can’t handle people being mad at me. I was afraid that if people honked to show their love of the movie, I would just think they were mad at me, and I would spend all of my drives stressed out. So I just loved the sticker from afar.
Then two things happened at once:
Lots of Mummy Sticker Imitators popped up. Text can be very easy to bootleg, and soon Etsy was flooded with lower-quality versions of my beloved Super Yaki’s idea. So the OGs at SY reprinted a small amount of these stickers, put them up on Etsy to block the haterz, and announced that they were donating the proceeds to Texas Civil Rights Project! Which is where I work!
(and perhaps even more relevantly) Everyone I’ve ever met sent me a picture of this sticker. Even people who didn’t know of my deep Super Yaki loyalty sent me a picture of this sticker. They had to; it fits my personal brand like a glove.2
I had to get the sticker! And I did. And I put it on my car. And people honked…
And I thought they were mad at me.
I’m a pretty smart person, but I am also very dumb. Sometimes I just don’t think! Even though I knew I had put the sticker on my car, each honk would make me forget… at first.
Eventually, I started to notice that people in my rearview would do a short honk, and then laugh or wave excitedly. I started to retrain my brain from “this is an angry honk” to “this may be an angry honk, but it may be a future friend with excellent taste in movies.” Sometimes it is an angry honk.3 But now when someone honks at me, I actually think before I react!
Somehow, this beautiful sticker has also helped me to retrain my brain in other areas. Last week, I got an email from somebody I’m working with and the preview text in the notification said something like “I just wanted you to know that you’re doing a great job…” A healthy human brain would assume that the email is complimentary throughout. By contrast, my brain was like “oh my god, they must be mad at me, this is the compliment you give someone before you tell them that they actually suck.” When I clicked on the email, it actually was complimentary throughout! Of course!
In that moment, I thought of the Mummy sticker. Assuming that you suck, without much evidence that you suck, is no way to live.4 I’m trying to have a knee-jerk reaction of self-kindness, to retrain my reflexes to give myself some grace.
It’s starting to work! And I think I should reward myself. Probably with something from the upcoming Super Yaki Mads Mikkelsen collection. It’s only fair.
I don’t accept criticisms of You’ve Got Mail! Sorry! You can talk to me about basically anything else! But I’m a YGM fundamentalist! I don’t have to be reasonable!
A regular glove, not an OJ glove
There are better drivers than me in the world, I’ll admit
Assuming that you suck when you actually do suck is good practice tho