Here's your sign

We live in a nice, quiet, little town in rural America, where the children can play outside without worry of guns, drugs or kidnappers. Granted, there's also not much to "do" here. A few parks, a grain elevator, a bar, a diner and a gas station. Oh, and let's not forget the volunteer fire department. But we like the quiet. We like the safety.

There is a park across the street from my house, which is great because it's almost an extension of my yard. My monkeys are over there, along with many other kids, at any given time of day. People even come from out of town to play at this park. It gets a lot of use. We also happen to live on the corner of "Main Street" and a county highway that runs through our sleepy little village. The highway sees traffic from semi trucks hauling grain and pigs, people going from one village to the next, motorcycle groups doing (barhop) "rides" and even a bicycle race every summer. While the highway turns before the park, the road in front of the park still gets a fair amount of traffic from residents and errant motorcyclists who missed the sign.  Though there is a stop sign at the end of the block,  people often drive faster than they should, especially given that there's a park full of children there. (Never mind my 2 yo escape artist who has been known to take it upon himself to sneak out and go to the park on his own. I could write a whole post on his escape tactics, they're that impressive.) We've heard cars hit the brakes before.

One of my neighbors, who's children are grown, really has a bee in her bonnet (rightly so) about how fast people drive here, and has tried to get a removable speed bump put up. The most surprising thing is that the speeding offenders are often  parents of younger children. Go figure. While the council thought it was cost prohibitive to put up a speed bump, they decided on putting up some extra signs.

The first of such signs was put up yesterday.

Our lovely town cop placed a small stand-alone sign (as seen at the top) in the middle of the street right as you enter our block.

After about half an hour (no exaggeration), a young mom, talking on her cell phone, comes cruising around the corner and SMOKES the sign. (Kong was there to witness this whole event.)  Since she had a street sign jammed under her car and windshield washer fluid pouring everywhere so she didn't have much choice, she stopped, got out, and proceeded to get mad about "who puts a blankety blank sign in the middle of the bleeping street??" My husband was quick to point out that at least it was a "blankety blank sign and not a blankety blank kid." "Huh. Yeah. No kidding," she said.

Guess it proves the point that it needs to be there.

Here's your sign, sweetheart. **rolls eyes** Heeeere's yer sign.