Warnings of rattlesnakes and other disturbing signage

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Everywhere we go there are signs telling us what to do and where to go. We rely on these signs. Well, my husband does – I don’t really pay attention unless I’m looking for something specific. I am a horrible navigator. I ride an awesome shotgun, I can hand you things and find truck stops on my smart phone, but I cannot navigate. Don’t ask me if we’re going East or West, and don’t even try to make me tell you what mile marker we’re at. Of course, the only reason he would ever need me to navigate is if about twelve different things broke at the same time and he happened to be somewhere he’d never been before. Highly unlikely and something I rarely worry about.

The signs I happen to see are usually the disturbing ones. We pulled into a rest area in Texas and were greeted by a huge yellow sign that said, ‘BEWARE OF RATTLESNAKES’. Needless to say, I did not have one single pleasant public bathroom experience the entire time we were in Texas. I was in constant fear that at any given moment, four hundred rattlesnakes were going to shoot out from every conceivable crack and crevice and bite my face off.

I really hate the signs that say, ‘THERE HAVE BEEN 973 DEATHS ON THIS ROAD IN THE PAST EIGHT DAYS”. It’s like you don’t stand a chance of making it to the other side, better get on the phone and tell the kids goodbye. (You can have the rock collection and your sister gets the sewing machine). I find these extremely distracting and I’m not even driving. They don’t seem to bother my husband, but about 90% of the time, he knows where he’s going and doesn’t look at the signs unless they’re big and orange.

Billboards are hard to miss, unless you see a million of them a day. I rarely glance at them, unless they mention UFO’s or haunted caves. I have noticed the closer you get to downtown in big cities, the number of DUI attorney billboards grows exponentially. I find it ironic where they think their target audience is. Hammered and flying down the highway, taking down a lawyer’s number just in case. That’s safe. I wonder about the lawfulness of any billboard having a telephone number on it. Doesn’t that encourage people to pick up the phone while driving? Not everyone has an awesome co-pilot to make calls for them.

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I hate to see the crosses, there are too many of them. It makes me sad, I try not to notice them. There’s nothing funny about these. It’s sobering when you travel as many miles as we do to see just how many people are killed on the highways. Y’all be careful out there.

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