The Hieroglyphics of Modern Life

It is Friday, and the Fridays are for fun, especially now that January is behind us, and some of the cold too.

This week I had to bite the bullet and buy some office equipment.  I feel like an IT department of one as I install drivers and change network settings.  I am not much of an instruction reader, I can pretty much screw anything up by reading the instructions or not, so I would prefer to not waste my time reading them.

I can’t help but notice how many little pictures or symbols are on everything.  Not just office equipment but cars and camera’s and food packages and cleaning chemicals and doors and signs and every where.  I think it is supposed to make things easier but I find the little pictures confusing.

There are pictures of how to put things together but I can never make what I am putting together look like the picture and I end up with extra pieces that I don’t know what to do with. After a time I forget which extra piece goes with what.  I hate to throw them away but my office is getting cluttered. 

I get it that when the little picture of a gas pump lights up on the dashboard of my car  it is time to buy gas.  In fact it works so well that I use it to make all my gasoline purchasing decisions so that I don’t have to think about it.  It even dings which is nice, but it is the same ding as the ding that works with the picture of the little man and the seat belt.

There is another light on my dashboard, it has been red for a week.  If my husband sees this post I am going to get yelled at.  I know what the warning light is not.  Battery, breaks, oil, door open, trunk open, out of gas, parking break on, water temperature, dirty car*,  or low coolant.  You would think that would cover all the lights but there is one more.  A red square, with a horizontal squiggly line.  There is a symbol that looks like an arrow pointing at the squiggly line.  It can’t be good but I have been driving it that way all week and no other lights have come on and the wheels go around so how bad can it be?

Seriously thinking about going to the dealership and asking one of the kids in the lube bay if they get it.  Can’t be anything to do with the tires because they are round and the symbol  is square, and besides the tires are only a couple of months old.  My son, Andrew,  explained to me that he was just teasing and that cars do not really have headlight fluid so I don’t have to worry about that any more.   I try to be nice to him because he knows which button to press to set the clock in my car. 

There is a symbol on one of my camera’s that looks almost like the symbol that is lit up in my car.  I consulted the camera manual, I know big step for me, and decided that they could not possibly mean the same thing. 

Some of the symbols are easy to understand.  Like the one of a mangled hand inside my printer.  Others are universal, like the symbols for men’s and women’s restrooms, but yet I wonder if they mean the same thing in Scotland as they do in Minnesota.

It would be nice if there was a universal symbol for not understanding symbols, maybe it would look exactly like a question mark.

Have a great weekend!

*there is not really a dirty car light, I made that one up, but you knew that.