Signs

The other day I saw a church sign that read, “When your back is turned to God, no direction is the right one.”

I immediately thought, Well what about backwards?  Wouldn’t that be the right direction?

At CVS I saw a sign that read, “If you look to be under the age of 38, we will card you for tobacco products.  We are truly sorry for the inconvenience.”

This sign has so many weird aspects that I spent 10 minutes pondering it.  First of all, the word truly strikes me as very odd.  Are they really, truly sorry?  Are the CEO’s of CVS in spiritual anguish over this policy?  Are they taking long walks, tears streaming down their faces as they think about all the customers with youthful faces who will now be forced to show their IDs?  I mean, why put the word truly in there?  Maybe Walgreens has a sign that simply says, “We apologize for the inconvenience,” and CVS thought, we can do better than that. We can be truly sorry!  We can passionately mourn this inconvenience.  We can rip out tufts of hair and gnash our teeth over how f–ing tragic this whole situation truly is!

Secondly, why pick 38?  How do you even tell, definitively, if someone looks to be older or younger than 38?  I mean, some people you could, like babies or Mr. Miagi, but there is a huge demographic of people out there who could go either way.  So, following this logic, as a cashier you’d have to say, “I can’t tell if you look like you’re under 38, but you do look like you don’t look like you’re way older than 38, so I’m going to have to card you.”  Then your brain explodes. 

And when that happens, CVS is seriously, honest to God, truly sorry for the inconvenience.