You know that daily commute home? The one you’ve taken every day for many years, where you have every detail memorized, every pot hole, every street light, to the point where you really don’t need to pay attention anymore, you kind of just make it home without thinking too much. Well, today for the first time in years, I started to think about a particular street sign. It’s one that I’ve must of crossed maybe a thousand times and I’ve become so used to this sign that I apply the same predicable reactions in resonse; I slow down, turn my head from left to right, over and over, and examine the sidewalks till I get to the end of the road.
No, the sign isn’t a silhouette of a deer or a moose, or of a man on a horse (which I ran into once near Charleston). In fact, those probably wouldn’t apply on a street with a sidewalk. It’s a simple sign with the words “Deaf Child” on it.
What struck me as odd for the first time was that I have seen this sign on this road all my life–well at least since my family first moved to East Providence 14 years ago. So if it was there at LEAST 14 years ago, God knows how far it really goes back. 20 years? 25 years? In all probability this “child” the sign refers to is probably not really a child anymore, and in fact, he probably doesn’t even live on the same street anymore. Do they ever retire these signs? And how does a sign like this go up in the first place?
Talk about minutiae …