My Journey Into the Role of Community Activist

And how you too can make a pest of yourself in YOUR VERY OWN COMMUNITY!

It all started on a walk on an autumn day. I walk a lot. Sometimes here, sometimes there. Sometimes through the neighborhoods around me. Sometimes on a treadmill.

On this particular day, I was walking through my town and I spotted this sign.

I’ll give you a moment to spot the problem.

Yeah. Do you see it?

No, it’s not just that the pastor gets prime parking – though this was a factor that bothered A LOT of people when I posted it on Facebook. Many people took issue with the sentiment behind this sign.

Me? I took issue with the fact that someone made this sign. Someone who didn’t know the difference between YOUR and YOU’RE made this sign. And someone who didn’t know the difference between YOUR and YOU’RE bought this sign and hung it.

Well, two years later…. that sign remained. And it remained uncorrected. Every time I would walk past it, I would bite my lip and say to myself, “HOW DO THEY NOT KNOW WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS THING?”

It bothered me so much that one day before my walk, I scrawled “you’re” on a post-it with a Sharpie and stuck the pad in my pocket so I could peel off the Post-It and stick it to the sign when I walked by.

I know what you’re thinking, and really I DO have better things to worry about – but tell me this: this would bother you too, right? Walking past this sign, having that error jump out at your face every time you saw it? I wondered if the church had even noticed – and if they noticed WHY they didn’t care JUST HOW RIDICULOUS THIS SIGN WAS.

*sigh*

I slapped on the Post-It and walked away. The next day, through heavy rain… the pink paper remained  stuck to the sign.

And the next day.

Finally, a few days later, I was driving by and not only was the Post-It missing, the sign looked a little different.

I saw the sign, with its grammatical faux-pas hidden by paint, and I laughed.

I did. Pumpkin asked, “Why are you laughing?”

I didn’t even know how to explain it – because while the whole thing was a petty little grammatical goof – the fixed sign feels like a victory.

While I wouldn’t necessarily equate this victory with fighting crime, bringing down a crack house, or even cracking down on jaywalking, I am still pretty sure my community is a better place to live in without that sign and its glaring error.

Okay, maybe not for everyone else… but it is for me.

About sarah

Sarah is a book nerd, a music lover, an endorphin junkie, a coffee addict. Oh, and a goof ball. She writes, she tweets, and she sings off key.

Comments

  1. That would make me insane, too. The fact that nobody did anything about it for 2 YEARS is astounding.

  2. I would have done the same thing.

  3. Oh well done. I would have done the same. I don’t know about the States but in the UK ministers have to be graduates, some of them double graduates, there is no excuse. Plus I hate when people pull the “God is watching” line. Do the right thing because it is the right thing, not because God can see you.

    Now my BP is up and if I don’t write something else here the sentence will end with a preposition.

  4. There’s a new Grammar Sheriff in town and her name is SARAH. I might have taken a sharpie to it – you are too classy…

  5. I hate it when signs have errors like that in them, as well.

    I am kind of amused that people were annoyed at the Pastor Only Parking part of the sign, though. I wonder if they also get annoyed at Employee Only signs elsewhere? I mean, that’s what it is. (Not even going to address the GIWY part, since that’s completely a matter of belief. Of course, if He is watching, I bet He prefers that signs announcing it not make his followers look like morons.)

  6. Excellent 🙂 Sat here with the biggest grin reading this – I hope they were ashamed of their sign…

Speak Your Mind

*