Friday, October 31, 2008

If you can't read this, read on!

A brand-new billboard popped up along the busiest part of my morning commute, its big bold letters proclaiming, "If you can't read this...."

I can think of several ways to complete the sentence:

If you can't read this, press 2 for Espanol.

If you can't read this, call a literacy tutor.

If you can't read this, time to get your eyes checked!

The third option turns out to be correct: below the bold sentence fragment is the name of a local group of opthalmologists followed by their phone number in much smaller type. (If you can't read the big bold type, how are you going read the phone number?) A billboard aimed directly at people unable to read billboards seems an exercise in futility, but it makes me want to ask yet another question:

If your vision is so bad that you can't read this, what are you doing driving a car? Get off the road before you kill someone!

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