Something wrong has happened to us. It’s never any one event. Rather, death by a thousand paper cuts.

In the same week, I spotted essentially the same sign in two wildly different locations. One reminder was at a burgertorium drive-through, the other at my dentist’s office. Each cautioned customers to refrain from either actual violence or threatening violence on staff.

It’s tempting to climb aboard a tall hobby horse and pose sanctimoniously, insufferably bemused by how far we’ve fallen, that we need reminders to not murder the fetching dental hygienist. But, apparently, even Moses needed to haul down the mountain a pair of clay tablets, No. 6 of which was the reminder: “Thou shalt not kill.” Well. Technically? It’s “You shall not murder” or if you’re one of the Three Stooges, “You shall not ‘moiduh’ …”

Funny. Someone who had the Ten Commandments hanging in home or office is probably the last guy to slap himself on the forehead and go, “Oh, yeah! Thanks for the heads up. I won’t garrote the teen ice cream dispensing engineer at Dairy Queen for putting sprinkles on my hot fudge sundae.”

And yet, I find myself living in a stiflingly vanilla suburban community where we need little billboards reminding us not to chase the waitress around the parking lot because she brought the fruit cup instead of sliced tomatoes with your tuna salad sandwich. Who, in their right mind, threatens a French fry distributing engineer not with a smaller tip for perceived insolence but death?

A seeming epoch ago, a group of pals and I were........

© Santa Clarita Valley Signal