Monday, while driving the same backroads I usually take to work, I saw a yard sign. Now although it's not quite election season, when lawns everywhere will be dotted and clotted with red and blue signs, lawn signs this time of year are not infrequent sights. Just two weeks ago on one little half mile stretch of road, I counted at least half a dozen garage sale signs. Throw in the flood of For Sale signs, and one more hand-written sign shouldn't cause any concern, let alone a red alert sanity check. But this one was different. I swear on my stack of Bob Dylan CDs, LPs, and cassettes, this particular sign read: Wanted: Men Who Love To Sing, with a phone number below. What the hell is that, I wondered, practically ramming the curb and ricocheting off a USA Mail truck parked on the bend just beyond said house. The notion of a yard sign advertising for singing males intrigued me all day, and I even told Co-Workers about it--which might have been a fatal mistake.
For two whole days I pondered the significance of a yard sign calling for singing-loving men. I was thrilled, though a bit surprised, that in this day of internet access to communities of the most obscure and nicheiest interests, somebody would go the ancient fashioned route to trawl for like-minded fanatics. Could such a sign really pull in interested people located as it was on a not too heavily traveled street, where at most passersby only caught a fleeting glimpse of it? And really, the more I pondered the whole thing, what was the motive behind the sign, the actual motive among the myriad ones my mind kept coming up with: was it just a hopeful plea from some frustrated ex-glee club guy? a weird cult? some kind of cryptic message decipherable only by the erudite in-the-know? an invitation to a gay slumber party? a lonely woman looking for a suitable serenader? Cher looking for back-up singers? the Mormon Tabernacle Choir setting up a satellite Cleveland operation? My mind reeled.
I tossed and turned all Monday night, wondering whether I should take the grand step from being a lazy make-it-up-as-you-go-along blogger to being a full participatory journalist. Damn the fact that I can't sing; by the time they found that out I'd be deep within the fortress of the singing-loving-males club. I'd have a story. I looked ahead to this very blog post with relish--I'd have quite a story to tell. So I used my off day Tuesday preparing myself. I figured I'd get the phone number on my way to work Wednesday--yesterday--make the call, find out the real facts, and regale you all with what I'd discovered about such a strange sign. All day Tuesday I practiced various possible approaches to the phone call. Should I start with a one-man imitation of the Three Stooges' famous "hello, Hello, HELLO!"? Or maybe, more impressively, (singing) "ARE YOU LOOKING FOR A BASSO? or maybe a tenor? in a pinch, or maybe with a pinch, I could even do castrato!"? Should I take a no nonsense approach and demand immediately, "Look, I don't have time to play around. When do we hit the road, and do I get my own dressing room?" Or do I assume the sign was indeed a cryptic message to some sleeper cell of spies and just say, "Aunt Emma is in the henhouse. Would you like to knit yourself a sweater?" and see if within twelve hours I don't find myself on Cyprus running guns and saving damsels? Good God I barely slept Tuesday night.
And so it was yesterday that I turned onto the street with uncontained excitement. Pen and pad by my side, I slowed the car as I approached the bend. I figured it would take me three seconds to stop, copy the phone number, and be on my way quickly--just in case the Feds had been alerted and were eyeballing any passerby taking a too keen interest in the sign. But. What the hell? Really, where the hell? The sign was gone. Previous to Monday, the last time I had been on the road was last Thursday (community "Home Days" or some such nonsense over the weekend had changed my route)--so the sign couldn't have been up for more than three or four days. Why was it gone? Surely in such a short time with such a crude form of advertising, the person(s) so desperately in need of singing-loving males couldn't have reached his or her or their quota. Had the neighbors revolted, upset that so many cars were doing driveway turn-arounds and lingering on the street, sussing the sign and finding pen and paper to copy the phone number? Had some especially sharp and no-doubt-soon-to-be-promoted cop been alerted by the cryptic message on the sign and had thus busted up whatever shenanigans had been going on inside? Or, God forbid, had that poor person just looking for a little male-singing companionship despaired after a couple of days of no phone calls and given it all up? Once again, the mind reeled.
And reeled and reeled. Or could it all, please no, been nothing? Not real, but imagined somehow in my obviously-now-fer-piece-around-the-bend mind? Was it a mirage? I've never seen a desert; I've never experienced a mirage. Is there a verb form? To mirage? Is this another heinous effect of global warming? That people in areas such as the Great Lakes will now be suffering desert-like mirages? Isn't a mirage basically a good thing--seeing an oasis in the desert where there isn't one? Don't you just mirage things you want, desire? To what has my mind eddied that I'm miraging a sign seeking singing-loving males? What's next, seeing a skywriting plane spelling out in white wisps, "Need an anvil? Call Carl at ... "? Just how comfortable is a straitjacket?
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