#952 Human Signs

If you’ve read or heard many of my commentaries you know I have a fascination with the way we use words. Even more so that different words used in different contexts can so totally and drastically change the meaning, or the feeling.
Like yesterday when I wrote about candy corn. It wasn’t long before I remembered those times as kids when we tried to gross each other out. Usually it was around Halloween. And one of us came up with an idea for a snackfood for cannibals. Candied Corns.
Why it urps me still is why I never survived the OK Corral of that particular grossout shootout.
In any event, I recently heard a story about some shellfish issues along the South Sound. Seems this one company was growing oysters illegally. The story said that they had illegally “planted” the oysters.
And that just seems wrong for some reason. Don’t you plant plants? Can you plant an animal and then harvest it like a stalk of grain? It just seems to minimize the whole animal experience. Animals, by definition, move. You can deposit them somewhere, but they’ll get up and wander on. Motility, that’s the animal ethos.
Moving around is what animals do—and people. They hire those human beings to wave signs around because they move. They don’t just plant signs. They hire people to wave them.
I had a talk the other day with a temporary labor professional and we discussed those sign people. And how his organization trained them and made them more effective.
I’m not sure those sign shakers are great direct advertising, but I can see their usefulness when it comes to directing you the last 100 yards to your destination.
And perhaps that explains the new name they have. They’re not “sign shakers” anymore. They’re “Human Directionals.” I like it.
Except...
In a way, by giving them a name like “human directional” you’re sort of objectifying them. They’re a thing now. A type of sign. A human directional. And somehow less than human.
If you will, a sign of inhumanity.
America, ya gotta love it.