Bob

Batz

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February 11, 2008

I’m 68 Years Old and I’ll Loiter If I Want To

I was sitting in my car outside one of those huge drug stores the other day waiting for my wife to “pick up a few things,” as she puts it, when I spotted a rather large sign on the wall of the building.

The sign warned “NO LOITERING” and went on to point out that violators would be punished to the “full extent of the law”, which suggested to me that if I loitered outside that particular business and got caught, I would be promptly put to death by lethal injection, or, worse yet, I’d be forced to watch reruns of Jerry Springer’s TV show for the next 32 years.

No loitering? Gimme a break.

For openers, nobody loiters any more.

When I was younger, I loitered. My friends loitered, too.

Hey, it was another time.

Cars still had running boards. Gasoline cost something like 25 cents a gallon and for a buck or so we could cruise the whole city for hours and hours and hours.

White buck shoes and ducktail haircuts were all the rage. But back then we didn’t loiter outside drug stores. We did loiter outside bowling alleys, teen dances and other places.

To my knowledge, we never harmed anyone while loitering. We just . . . well . . . loitered.

Now that I’m 68, I don’t view loitering as a particularly heinous crime. In this age of murder and mayhem, I see loitering as a relatively harmless, no-brainer-type activity . . . like golf, or maybe painting the garage ceiling on a Saturday afternoon.

Furthermore, now that I’ve reached what I call the “I really don’t care about goofy rules” stage of my life, warning signs are at the tip-top of my rather lengthy list of things I don’t like any more.

The signs I dislike most include those that warn “NO FISHING” and “NO PARKING” and “KEEP OFF THE GRASS.”

I’m also turned off big-time by signs that say “NO TRESPASSING.”

Think about this: At least 99 percent of the “NO TRESPASSING” signs in America are posted on ramshackle buildings nobody in his right mind would want to go into anyway.

Speaking of warnings, I’m also amused by those bright-yellow triangular roadside signs that have a drawing of a leaping deer and are posted in rural areas to warn motorists that Bambi might be in the area.

That’s silly, though, because how many times have you actually seen a deer standing patiently beside one of those signs as it waits to cross the road?

The way I look at it, the whole purpose of warning signs is to keep sign companies in business.

With that in mind, I pretty much ignore most warning signs.

Just the other day I was at the public library and while standing next to a sign that advised “QUIET PLEASE” I talked. Out loud. Three times!

Of course, my habit of ignoring such signs occasionally has a downside to it.

One morning I was walking across the campus at the University of Dayton where I teach three journalism classes when I spotted a “WET PAINT – DO NOT TOUCH” sign on a door.

After looking around to make sure nobody was watching, I reached out and touched the door.

It was wet.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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