Today is supposed to be the day where I depict a well-known cliche with just a photo along with a caption clue. But it's my blog and I'm doing something a bit different to depict this cliche.
This photo is of a sign at the Crystal Lake Metra station - the one I rode for more than a month while I was staying with my Uncle Bill and Aunt Debbie before getting my own apartment in Arlington Heights. This same sign was mounted in all the waiting areas alongside the track, but the one I generally wound up in passing the time before the train got there was one where this sign was vandalized.
Let me be clear that I'm not a fan of hoodlums defacing public property, especially when it's just some black spray paint splashed across a stop sign or something, but sometimes vandalism is clever, quite funny, or just plain beautiful.
This was the case of vandalism striking me as funny. Someone had scratched out the "N" in "NOT SMOKING" and written a "P" so the sign became "THANK YOU FOR POT SMOKING" right above the words "THESE PREMISES ARE ELECTRONICALLY MONITORED."
I saw this sign every day for a month and every day I vowed to snap a photo, but just never got around to doing it. I either didn't want to take it with my cell phone camera, forgot, or was at the station in the nick of time to catch the train.
I was planning on crafting something clever along the lines of kids using their creativity in the wrong places or the threat of electronic monitoring apparently doing not much at all. However, I went to the station on a Saturday while running errands armed with my camera, went into my usual station and saw this brand-new, un-defaced sign. Thinking I went into the wrong waiting station, I went to the two on either side of this station and saw the same thing - a brand-new sign.
In the grand scheme of life, not snapping a photo of a graffitied sign before it's replaced is a trivial thing. But it's also a good lesson that I should live life by this cliche.
Last week's cliche: It's raining (cats and) dogs.
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