I just hoped they hadn't killed themselves or done some other brain-damaged trick that was going to clot up traffic for an hour. That sort of weirdness is distressingly common along that stretch of interstate.
But when I crested the hill, it wasn't emergency vehicles at all. It was a TxDOT (Department of Transportation) sign which normally whiles away its life flashing Amber Alerts and helpful blurbs on how to pull your head out of your ass while driving. In this particular sign's case, it was supposed to cleverly say:
MAINTAIN...but due to some fortuitous problem with the sign and/or its programming, it instead was just flashing this single word:
SOCIAL DISTANCING
IN PERSON AND
ON THE ROAD!
...a timely bit of advice which, frankly, makes it hands-down the most useful traffic sign in the history of traffic sign-dom. Made me laugh and kept me in a reasonably good mood for the rest of the trip home, and I ask you, what more could you ask from a humble road sign?
And, now, time to go pay the interest on my life...
“Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.” - Schopenhauer
Lol! Those signs are annoying af
ReplyDeleteMaintain. Well, yes. But I'm also reminded of what Hunter Thompson said of Hemingway. “He was an old, sick and very troubled man,” Hunter wrote, “and contentment was not enough for him.”
ReplyDeleteThe article I got that from was published five years before my marriage ended. I liked that line and read it to my wife. She groaned in a way that in retrospect became more familiar as those last years ground on.