Signs direct people's lives

Hi. I'm the Daily Forty-Niner's opinion editor. I think it' s time I got something off my chest: I like coffee - a lot.

If you are what you eat, then I'm a big coffee-ground with legs. It's disgusting, I know, but I'm only human. With legs.

I'm usually a social coffee-drinker, but when the travails of journalistic life get me down I like to drink it in solitude. It was obvious, therefore, that a hide-out needed to be found.

The closest exit to the Forty-Niner office spills out onto a small landing and concrete stairs leading up to the great b ig real world. Bleak as the surroundings may sound, they offer me a familiar and quiet place to collect my thoughts. And yes, to drink my coffee.

During one of my lonely sojourns, I had yet another brilliant insight in a long string of self realizations.

It happened that I'd chosen breaktime just when classes were changing. Massive amounts of students streamed by me going either way. Iwatched them go by like so many lab mice and made a game out of counting which of the two doors they went through. One door was closed and unmarked. The other was slightly ajar after I'd kicked it open and had a small handwritten sign on either side proclaiming that it was "out of order."

Being the miscreant that I am, I always make it a point to ente r and exit via the "broken" door.

I soon noticed an obvious pattern: nearly all of the traffic was through the closed and unmarked door. Only one time did someone start to use the wedged open door, but that person changed his (or her, I don't w ant to single out either gender) mind when he (or she) saw the sign.

I'd like to say I was surprised. I'd like to say I was flustered and amazed. But truly, I wasn't.

From birth, we are subjected to the right way to do things versus the wrong . Before we can even read, signs of one visual nature or another, are already working their insidious way into our subconsciousness.

I'm not saying that signs are inherently bad. I'm not throwing my lot in with the hardcore anarchists, though I d o sympathize with them. The poor little buggers are always being put down. The thought that our lives are so insidiously ruled by barely noticed factors bothers me to no end, though.

At least the majority of the Forty-Niner staff down here in the bowels of SSPA did use the "do not use" door. At least there is some small hope for the next generation of journalists.

Coffee-drinking journalists. With legs.

Rob Earl is the Forty-Niner opinion editor.