There is a sign I�ve been driving past all week. It is at the entry to a dead-end road near here. It reads, �Road Work. Local Traffic Only.� I laugh every time I drive by. That little street sure has a bad case of the over-importants.

I haven�t appreciated a road sign this much since my friend�s daughter ran into the �Slow Children� sign. (Only the child�s dignity was injured.)

Of course, other road signs have amused me over the years. Several years ago, I found myself in a van, going up Mount Rainier. As I hacked away due to asthma and S. did the same, we encountered just the sign we needed: �Congestion Ahead.�

That same trip, with the lack of oxygen clearly affecting my brain, we came across a �Deer Crossing� sign. Now, there�s nothing inherently amusing about a �Deer Crossing� sign�unless you don�t realize you are speaking aloud and ask, to the merriment of all, �How do the deer know where to cross?� I�m still waiting for a good answer.

Sometimes, it�s not so much the sign as the thinking behind it. Recently, the Department of Transportation obliterated the �east� on the �Highway 100 East� exit sign. They claimed truckers found it too confusing because in most places Highway 100 runs north and south�which all seems well and good until you notice that there is a �Highway 100 West� exit sign only yards away. Apparently truckers are only confused if they are going east.

Occasionally road signs are intentionally funny. I�m not talking about the signs of businesses along the way. I�m thinking of that New York City sign�the one that says, �Don�t even think of parking here!� I could use one of those in front of my house to discourage the guys from the electric company who illegally park their trucks so that they make it very hard to swing out of my driveway.

No, never mind. As we tell the kids over and over, things are usually funniest when they are not trying to be.

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