Hope is Hip, according to a number of bumper stickers that pass around Hope, Maine. But then there is one that stands out, one that reads, 'Hope really isn't that cool, guys!' Which I thought was totally unique. So I waited outside the store next to this very daring car until the owner emerged. Almost stunned to see a stranger lounging on her car, she — "Anonymous E" — ran up and demanded to know what was going on.

Corey Phillips is a student at the Community School, in Camden. Originally from Lewiston, he enjoys visual arts, music and the outdoors. After going to his first circus show he quickly was inspired to join the Cirque du Soleil, but until then, he is a writer.

It was then that Anonymous E told me the story behind the sticker.

She said she had always seen the sticker "Hope is Hip" and kind of disagreed with it, never really getting its meaning. Then one day, joking with a good friend, she said she would make her own sticker. In 2010, her fantasy came true and she made a sticker which reads, "Hope really isn't that cool, guys."

She tried to give it to her friend, but that one wanted no part of the blasphemy. She later made her decision to make two more, one of which she put on her car; the other went to a different friend, " ...one who was not a chicken," said Anonymous E.

She tells me that everyone loves the sticker. Everyone who sees it smiles, which makes her proud. But! She fully admits her ignorance and tells me later that she never actually had been to the Hope General Store. So she and I jumped in the car and took a ride over. She has since come to the conclusion that Hope really is hip. She fully respects Hope as a town and the local general store, and means nothing by her sticker. She sees it as a kind of inside joke for the fellow Mainers who know what she's talking about, as well as for tourists, seeing how it does not take a genius to see what she means.

But she still does not wish to reconsider her sticker. She tells me that she really enjoys the laugh she gets when she sees other HiH (Hope Is Hip) stickers and thinks about her own. She wishes one day to make a new sticker but she does not want to go into detail about it, yet.