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If You Got ‘Em, Please, Don’t Flaunt ‘Em

            I would like to talk to you about something serious, so serious that five states since Barack Obama has become President, let me repeat, five states, Washington, Virginia, Maryland, Florida and South Carolina, have taken up valuable legislative time to contemplate the issue.  It must be a serious matter because laws are expensive things to pass and, if someone decides to fight the law, that means thousands of dollars in legal fees and judges having to make extremely solemn decisions.  What is this issue, that in a time of recession, when states are feeling the pinch, that these fine states have felt it was important enough to devote legislative time? Cover the children’s eyes. Truck Nuts. Yes, truck nuts, or as they are also known truck nutz, truck balls, bumper nuts, bumper balls, bull balls or trucksticles.  Yes, truck nuts.  Respectable men and women, pillars of communities, have been debating truck nuts. Global warming, pooh, concerns about the state’s education system, pshaw, unemployment, what are you smoking, legislators are taking time to discuss truck nuts, and it might be coming to a state near you.

If you don’t have a redneck near and dear to your heart, you might not know what they are. They are crude and tasteless, and, once you see them, you will see them all over the place. They are made of rubber, plastic, or in some cases, when Goober has a lot of extra ones in his pockets, metal. They come in all the colors of the rainbow from black tuxedo (“When you have to show up to an affair in style.”), to blue balls, to fireman red (“Be the most popular man in the fire station with your red balls.”) to flesh colored, to juicy orange (I refused to read the caption on the package for this one) , to Nuts of Steel (They are really made of aluminum and hollow inside. Insert your own joke here. What man doesn’t lie about what his truck nuts are made out of, except maybe John Wayne, Mike Ditka, and Evel Kneivel.), and shiny brass ones (“Forged only in the USA.” Like you are going to see them on a French truck for goodness sake.)  Usually they are just dirty, covered in mud, filthy, gross, and in need of a good wash. They weigh anywhere from one to three pounds and cost between $20 to $55.

They are usually hung from the rear hitch of a pickup truck by a piece of wire and, well, they resemble, um, an old man on a hot day, um, you know, not the kind of nuts you eat unless you are like Jeffrey Dahmer or Hannibal Lector. Now, have you seen them? Last year, as I drove across the western United States, I actually made it kind of a game. What state, did I spy with my little eye, have the most truck nuts?  Utah. I would have thought Texas or maybe Montana…, but no, it was Utah. What the connection between Mormons and trucks nuts is, I haven’t the foggiest clue. Still, the state where rhythm goes to die loves its truck nuts.

Now, I personally do not get them. Maybe it is that I drive an energy efficient Japanese vehicle and people like me do not find such things funny. Maybe, they do and I have just never seen them because they are small or something. Still, it is a product that costs roughly a case of beer,  or two if it is a crappy hipster beer. So, Billy Joe is giving up at least a case of beer, a Slim Jim or some other salted meat, a lottery ticket, a puck of Skoal and a chance to try their luck on the Claw machine. All of this for a product that, once he puts it on his truck, repels all females. Nothing says romance and class like truck nuts. I have never met a woman who has seen a pair of Trucksticles dangling off of some dude’s pickup and thought, “I thought Jim Bob was just like everyone else until I saw his bumper balls. I got to have me some of that!”

Do guys personalize their pickup trucks as an extension of themselves? Maybe trucks nuts “man” up their trucks? I have also noticed that the gentleman who is still mourning Dale Earnhardt’s death a decade later with a decal in the rear window, and thinks that naked chrome chick mud flaps spell sophistication, give their pickup a female name.  You make the connections.

Our serious minded representatives are debating banning truck nutz.  Now there are certain debates and legislating that would be hilarious to watch as a fly on the wall. In Georgia there was a debate on how many “back massagers” a woman could own. It was decided that she could own one and still be prim and proper.  In Nevada, it is against the law for a legislator to wear a penis costume while conducting official state business. I assume that if you are on your own time a lawmaker can run around in a penis costume all day long.  In Bakersfield, California, the city council passed a law stating that if you are going to have intercourse with Satan, you or Lucifer must wear a condom. The debate over truck nuts is one of these things. How half the legislature is not giggling like little schoolgirls while someone talks about the plague of bumper balls is beyond me.

I personally think of them as a form of redneck birth control.  If you find them a classy addition to your vehicle, you probably should not be reproducing anyhow. I know they are crude and rude, but ban them? In South Carolina, a woman, and wouldn’t you like to meet her, was pulled over because she had truck nuts dangling from her vehicle.  The officer issued her a $425 fine. So, the state of South Carolina, a state whose slogan should be “At Least We Are Not Mississippi or Arizona,” a state that needs every dollar it can spare for education, is going to spend thousands of dollars to fight the plight of bumper balls.

Are they offensive? Yes, but so are a lot of things. Obama Chia pets, Axe’s ad campaign for premature perspiration, snow penises, the wood cut outs of fat women bending over showing their underwear that people put in their front yards, drinking mugs that resemble a woman’s breast, chrome chick mud flaps, official bikini inspector baseball caps, suggestive t-shirts, and “juicy” shorts for girls.

How am I going explain to my child, when we get behind a truck on the highway, what those dangling pieces of rubber are? First, if you cannot talk to your child about some people’s lame sense of humor, you have bigger relationship problems with your child than truck nuts.  Second, it is a pretty safe bet that your kid has already seen stuff on the Internet that would make Caligula blush. It is no longer, nor has it ever been, a childproof world. I remember being in second grade. Your child is a lot less innocent than you like to think. Most of the time they will not even put two and two together unless you make a big deal out of it.

In all five states where the truck nuts war has been fought, it is legal to have a slaughtered deer or other wild life, with all their parts uncovered, in the bed of a hunter’s truck. Now, if a bloody, slaughtered buck with its daddy parts hanging out is not going to traumatize your child, pieces of molded rubber that look more like Mr. Magoo than human anatomy are not going to either. Are we going to force truckers to put panties on all of their sheep and bras on their hog cargo because a child might see the difference between a mommy and daddy pig? How about dogs? Are we going to make them wear some BVDs for the children’s sake?  It is a question of taste, not protection of children.

If you don’t like truck nuts, you don’t need the nanny state to protect you.  You want to see the streets free of truck nuts, make fun of the Bubbas that have them dangling off the rear of their truck. I take pictures of their vehicle and mock them on Facebook. Billy Bob needs love, too, and women have more power than they like to admit. If men who have them are mocked, especially by women, you will never see another one flapping in the breeze.  My only question is, how are you going to explain to future generations, landfills full of truck nuts.  Yes, C3P0, we humans thought they were funny. I cannot explain it. You just need to trust me.