OUT OF SERVICE

Most of the time, you and I go about our lives without paying too much attention to the other people who are going about their lives ignoring us. That is just the way of the world. I think our brains would explode if we actually filled it with day to day detritus that had nothing to do with us. Well, either that or people would begin to call us geniuses.

Part of what happens is that our brain sees something and automatically assumes it is the same something that it has seen a thousand times before. That isn’t always the case and it is just those cases that we should be paying attention to because the odd time they might just be important. Not likely, but you never know.

I was returning my bottles and cans to the bottle depot this morning before they get covered with the snow we are expecting tonight. I was driving along a road on the way when for some reason all of the vehicles cut into my lane. Something was different so I needed to put my brain back into gear and figure out what it was. It turns out there was some construction going on. What that means in Calgary is that at some point just before the rush hour, the city workers moved some big equipment into the middle lane and put out about a hundred orange traffic cones so that we drivers will avoid that large, yellow piece of equipment that is towering above everything else. There are rarely any workers doing anything other than smoking or sitting in city owned pickups doing something with their smart phones.

 

One of the vehicles that cut in front of me was a Police pickup truck. Why the cops need pickup trucks, I will never know. Maybe to haul away the guns and drugs they get when someone gets busted. Maybe the cops are into tail gating at football games. The only thing that made this truck stick out is the cover on the lights on the roof. The cover said “OUT OF SERVICE”

 

I have seen buses and cabs with OUT OF SERVICE signs before, but never a cop car. It isn’t as if many people try to flag down a cop as he is passing. Half of the people aren’t eager to draw police attention to themselves and the other half of us would call the cops if we needed one. Obviously someone felt it was important enough to have covers for the lights made up. I would have thought a piece of cardboard tucked in the front or rear window that had “OUT OF SERVICE” written in felt marker would do the trick just fine.

 

I kind of wanted to get his attention at the lights to ask him what the sign was about, but I couldn’t because he was “OUT OF SERVICE”.