Are You Part-time?

If you’ve ever looked at want ads/classified ads in the newspaper, you’ve probably seen one advertising an opening for a part-time person.
Do you know anyone who is a part-time person? If so, what is he or she the rest of the time? Couldn’t the ad be worded for part-time work instead “Part-time Person Wanted.”
Sometimes the wording of things makes me laugh – or just wonder.
I was at a doctor’s office one time, sitting on the examining table, when the doctor, ready with stethoscope, said, “Breathe in and out.” I said “Okay, I will, but tell me this: what other ways are there to breathe?” He said no one had ever before, in his many years of practice, asked him that. I was just curious. After all, isn’t a request to breathe the same as one to breathe in and out, or have you ever known someone who breathed some other way? Side to side, perhaps? Up and down? No, I believe we all breathe in and out.
Still another wording oddity that caused me to laugh out loud was a sign on a roadway. In fact, it was so funny that I turned the car around, went back and took a picture of the sign. This sign was an official one from the highway department, and it read: “Men Working When Flashing.”
Now, I never knew people got paid for flashing! Actually, I even thought flashing was considered a crime. Can you imagine the mental images that sign provoked? I pictured men on the side of the road in khaki-colored trench coats, hats on heads, sunglasses covering eyes while they opened and closed their coats to expose themselves. And getting paid for such!
It’s my guess that there were supposed to be lights nearby that turned on and flashed when men were working nearby. I couldn’t find the lights; perhaps they had not yet been installed or maybe they had already been removed. Regardless, it was a funny sign.
If the state really needs to save money, maybe it could advertise for part-time people to do the flashing. Just a thought, while I sit here breathing in and out.

Copyright 2008 Sherry Martschink