Officially Odd

A strange new addition to my drawbridge.

Recently, this sign was installed on all four corners of my drawbridge.

Bridge Sign

No one gave me a heads up about this. I just looked up one day and saw the workmen drilling holes on my beautiful bridge. It kind of felt like a violation. I take pride in my job and I love this bridge.

First of all, let me just say that I agree that jumping from a bridge is a really bad idea. You don’t know what jagged, rusty debris has been lodged beneath the surface over the years. You could hit a protection pier and break every bone in your body. (This has happened.) You could hit a passing boat. If the bridge is tall enough, it’s most likely going to be suicide by stupidity.

But can I just say that this is a very weirdly worded sign? Fist of all, why is “consequences” capitalized? Second, not all jumps are fatal. Third, “tragic” is a little vague. And why would it come after fatal, and not before? Aren’t fatalities tragic? Do they have to be broken out into their own little horrifying groups?

For an official city sign, it seems rather foreboding, emotional and repetitive. And dare I say that these signs are not going to prevent the stupid young boys, who are wont to do the jumping, from exercising this particular Seattle rite of passage? I wish people took signs seriously, but they don’t. If they did, I can think of a half dozen other signs that are needed here, based on the daily shenanigans that I witness.

I have no idea who designed these signs, or what prompted them to be put up at this particular moment in history, but here they are. I suspect that we’ve merely provided people with another place for their graffiti. I also suspect that these signs will always bug me. But these things are way beyond my paygrade.

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Author: The View from a Drawbridge

I have been a bridgetender since 2001, and gives me plenty of time to think and observe the world.

5 thoughts on “Officially Odd”

  1. To protect the city from being sued, they’d only be interested in legal accuracy in their wording. Maybe you could tell them what other signs are needed from your perspective. Your input might generate an investigation into appropriate action for the public’s, and therefore, city government’s well being.

  2. Hope you document your attempts so when an inevitable tragedy, you’ve warned about, occurs, you can hold them accountable for negligence by failure to address a known potential hazard.
    On a distantly related topic … https://www.npr.org/2020/08/02/898165324/americans-go-home-canadians-track-u-s-boaters-sneaking-across-the-border … you know it’s bad when you tick off Canadians. Hope they put up signs to ward off disrespectful, illegal American border crossers… as if they’d obey. They should impound their boats before sending the idiots back. 🙂

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