Detouring Around The Detour
A few miles outside of Colorado Springs, there is a sign to indicate that if you want to travel on Elbert Road you’ll need to follow the detour signs. Since I was heading to speak at the Colorado Cowboy Camp Meeting (which is another story in itself), I needed to go through Elbert, which, in case you’re wondering, is where Elbert Road in Elbert County leads to, and then on to the Camp Meeting grounds another 30 miles or so past that.
I followed the detour signs on down the road for a few miles until I reached Peyton, turned left as the sign instructed me to do, and proceeded this way and that way until I met up with Elbert Road again. So far so good until…
As I approached the intersection that brought me back to the continuation of Elbert Road, the detour sign pointed to the left, except I knew Elbert was to the right. What to do? Follow my instincts and turn right? Assume that the county highway workers getting close to the end of the work week were weary, a little lacking in detail, and not reading the signs (Bad pun!)? Did they forget what was their right and what was their left, or had run out of detour signs pointing to the right, and made the directional mistake?
Or should I continue to follow the signs, even when I knew this one was wrong?
I turned right.
After I made the turn, in my rearview mirror I could see flashing lights. I pulled over to see what the lighted sign said underneath the flashing. It said, “Road Closed Ahead,” which was now behind me.
Most of the time, following the signs is the way to go. Once in a while, however, there is a person, leader, group, or organization who decides on the direction and has no clue as to what he, she, or they are doing. Suddenly, theres’s an abrupt closure up ahead.
It might be a county roads worker who is short on sleep, hot, and sweaty and, as a result, brings a temporary uncomfortableness to those trusting in what the signs say, but sometimes it’s a simply movement or a whacked idea that leads to the edge of a cliff. The side of a cliff is fine in a Far Side cartoon or Roadrunner cartoons, and even for a herd of demon-possessed pigs that are running away from Jesus, but when the cliff is ending and a shred of misguided people are approaching it at full speed someone needs to get on a bullhorn and say the sign was pointing in the wrong direction.
I can recall a whole volume of times my decisions lacked common sense and my life was heading in the wrong direction, but most of the time I’ve been able to figure out what seems to be a bad idea, what leads to misery, and what is just plain stupid. I mean, there is a reason why they titled the one TV show “Jackass” instead of “Genius”
When I headed toward the cliff there were consequences connected to the nonsense. In our culture today, bad decisions with cliff-teetering results seem to get blamed on someone or something else. As someone sprints towards destruction, it seems that he rationalizes that there will be someone who will throw him a rope as he’s losing his balance.
Sometimes we need to be perceptive enough to detour around the detour. That, however, may be asking a bit too much of some folk.
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