Exreality.NET

Signs were simple in the biblical days. Humans were so dense that they believed that a good crop meant that Mother Gaia was happy with them. God was also very direct with his signs, smiting people who disobeyed him and parting seas to save his chosen ones. But as history progressed, humans began to create their own signs. At first, they were simple and thus easily understood and even followed. There were simple store signs like “Le Shoppe” and eventually signs to alert travelers to the distance between the sign they were reading and the town ahead. But now people have become so dense that signs mean nothing to them. So I am forced to wonder why bother?

If people don’t have the common sense to listen to warnings and signs before they encounter trouble, then I don’t think that they have the right to escape this insurmountable danger when they encounter it. For example, stop signs are a simple sign that mean one damn thing: STOP. You may have heard of these bright red octagonal signs with white lettering that read “STOP”. This doesn’t mean rolling stop, blow right through, slow down and slam the gas at the sign, or tap your break lights a little. It means come to a complete halt before proceeding. They’re there to make traffic flow smoother because if they weren’t there, people would eventually just crash into each other in the middle of the intersection and thus traffic does not flow smoothly because there’s a fourteen car pileup blocking the exit to your neighborhood. Speed limit signs have a similar meaning, go 5-10 miles above the allotted speed on the sign. Your car’s speedometer is normally 5 mph faster than what registers on police radar anyways. At any rate, these signs are there to be at least acknowledged so we can be somewhat safer out on the roads.

But these aforementioned signs dictate laws of a local area, thus you are liable to pay for any sign you blatantly disregard. Never the less, these signs are posted by those who make laws and thus we put up with them. What we shouldn’t have to put up with are the signs that the average citizen puts up on his own time. Not because they don’t display pertinent information, but because this information may not be correct, and normally they are either annoying or an eyesore. When people go on their own little power trips, they believe that they are the only people of any intelligence in the world. Then these people obtain the notion that other people are too idiotic to understand how intelligent they are. This eventually leads to them putting up signs like “Joe’s Property” or “Do Not Touch”. These signs are aggravating. Normally, I wouldn’t touch a priceless artifact that could crumble at the touch of my finger, but the fact that you have to tell me not to insults my intellect and makes me want to touch it now.

Another example would be someone who marks their name on all their food, usually an item in the fridge at college. I usually would not want to drink milk that expired 2 weeks ago, but now that I see your name on it, it seems like I am now obligated to do so. The fact that you think we would drink your milk or touch something that’s worth more than our lives is insulting to the average individual. Then again, I live in a magical optimistic land where the average person has at least a decent education and some common sense. If you have set up ground rules stating that Joe is an asshole who doesn’t want to share a regularly used item like milk, why do you feel it is necessary to state that the milk is yours? Maybe if there are multiple cartons of milk (which usually end up having different fat contents, brand names, and sizes) I think marking your carton is ok, but unfortunately Joe takes it upon himself to not only mark his once, but 5 times and include the phrase in all caps “DO NOT DRINK!!!”. If I’m going to allow you to take up the fridge with your two gallon-sized containers of milk you by from Costco and not share it with the other people in the house, do me the courtesy of not rubbing it in my face that I cannot have milk with my cereal because some jackass leaves no room in the fridge for my small pint of non-fat.

Now self written signs are tolerable in a few situations, but when someone goes out and purchases a sign to display is when it starts to get out of hand. What has pissed me of the most is when my neighbors place out a sign that reads “Slow Down: Children at Play”. It’s not the sign itself that bugs me because they put it out in the middle of the street when their kids are playing, but when I come around the corner in my car I have to take the turn wide because it’s in the middle of the fucking road. I normally slow down anyways because those kids just pop out of nowhere. But every time I approach my house and the sign is out, I round the corner and there are no children in sight… no garage doors open, no cars at the houses, and no activity anywhere! So I figure, maybe they’re just hiding. I continue to creep along in my car, foot over the brake pedal just in case one of those tricky bastards decides to try and kill themselves on the hood of my car, but I always manage to get to my driveway and park without incident. Signs are fine in my opinion, as long as they actually mean something. I’ll tolerate them as long as they’re there for a real reason, as to keep myself and others safe or to warn me of an impending danger. What I can’t stand are people who use signs that aren’t true. On many of occasions have I come home to that situation, where the sign is out and the children are not. The fact that they put it out only when their children are outside indicates that I should be extra cautious when I see it because I shouldn’t try to kill their children with my car… But they just leave it out and put it away at their leisure. If you are going to be an egotistical prick and put that out when your children are at play to keep them safe, I suggest you remove it when they aren’t because that is plain courtesy. If I’m going to be courteous enough to not run over your child (oh and they do deserve to be run into the ground), I think you should extend the same courtesy to me by removing the sign when they are not playing in a prompt manner. Remember, with great power (and by great power I mean the small ego boost you get by making/buying a sign to put on display) comes great responsibility. Don’t end up like my jackass neighbors, do the right thing and don’t put up your own signs unless it’s true. The More You Know.