Road Signs

March 9, 10:00 a.m.

A few days ago I was driving to my first dog walk of the day, singing the Almond Joy/Mounds song “sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t,” over and over in my head when I came across two road signs that had me perplexed.

The first one was:

I laughed at the word “Hump” as typically they are called Speed “Bumps” but stopped laughing as my car bottomed out on the rubber hump.

Not more than two blocks later, I saw the next sign:

The bump was much less severe than the hump but now I was wondering what the difference between a speed hump and a speed bump was.* Well, at least that stopped the Almond Joy/Mounds song in my head.

However, now I had OCD about all the street signs I passed during the driving time I had between dog walks. I decided to bring my camera the next day to take some photos of these mystifying signs.

The next day, my first task was to take photos of the speed hump and bump signs (that should be a song – Speed Hump and Bump . . .).

It was around 9:30 a.m. so I didn’t think anyone would be out to see me take photos of these signs, but sure enough there was an elderly gentlemen walking his black lab across the street from where I parked. He quickly glanced at me once or twice when I stopped and got out of the car to take photos of the Speed Hump sign but when I drove a little further up the road to take a few more photos of the Speed Hump sign (and the actual hump), he outright stared at me.

I felt compelled to say something, so I said “Hi. My car was damaged by this speed BUMP (I didn’t want to say HUMP), so I’m taking photos of it.”

He promptly replied “Well, did you slow down?” Typical old curmudgeon.

I immediately said “Yes, of course, but my car sits low and this speed bump caused damage – ripped the oil pan right off.”

The curmudgeon said “Oh” and looked at me skeptically. I don’t know why I added the oil pan part – dramatic effect I guess. In fact, I suppose there would have been oil on the road if that happened.

I traveled about three blocks to the Speed Bump sign and took photos of the sign and the bump without being caught by dog walkers or neighborhood residents, thank God.

I drove to my dog walks and once again, was obsessed with checking out every road sign along the way. I took photos of about a dozen but only a couple were interesting and I started thinking that maybe I should stop pulling to the side of the road to take these photos as it was kind of a weird thing to do.

In fact, I was at a signal looking at the photos on my camera, when a cop pulled up beside me. He gave me a sidelong glance, probably thinking that I was texting, but I was just looking at the photos on my camera so I don’t think he could have ticketed me for that (you never know). After that I stopped pulling off to the side of the road to take photos. I also noticed that I was paying more attention to the signs than my actual driving and caught myself veering into the other side of the road every now and then.

I won’t bore you with all of the photos I took as these two signs were the only other funny ones I saw:

There were four of these “penis signs” on one street. How annoying. I still don’t know the purpose of this sign except for entertaining drivers with dirty minds.

This next sign was right down the road from the penis sign. I started thinking that maybe I was in a porn neighborhood!

Enjoy your driving, be careful and pay attention to road signs!

*From Wikipedia: While similar to speed bumps, humps are less aggressive than speed bumps (not in my experience) at low speeds and are used on actual streets, as opposed to bumps which are primarily placed in parking lots. While speed bumps generally slow cars to 5 – 10 mph (8 – 15 km/h), humps slow cars to 10 – 20 mph (15 – 30 km/h).