Thursday, October 19, 2006

May contain peanuts

Bridge may be icy;
Medication may cause drowsiness.

May contain peanuts,
Or trace amounts of milk and tree nuts.

And here I am, taunted
By warnings that never come true.

2 comments:

b. said...

but when they by chance may be true, you will have been sufficiently warned. tell the truth, on a cold windy day, upon approaching a bridge, don't you recite in your head those very words, with no need to read the sign. i sure do. but. if it were a one time warning buried in the middle-ish of my driver's ed. book, i'm not so sure that "bridge may be icy" would pop into my unsuspecting conscience.

Dulcimer said...

Yeah.

But when you read a "bridge may be icy" sign in the dog days of summer, doesn't it just make you feel sad? Because you know very well that, with temperatures soaring above 90, there will be no ice to cool you, to soothe you, to give you a much-needed rest from the sweltering heat.

When you open up a pack of M&Ms without peanuts (even though you'd really prefer the with-peanut variety), and read the "may contain peanuts" warning . . . doesn't it get your hopes up, only to dash them when you find that none of the M&Ms actually contains any peanutty goodness?