I had to start off by showing this photo which I took of a truck which was stopped just in front of me at the traffic lights.

The funny thing is that I had seen this sign a number of times and thought what is the world coming too when we have to caution a truck driver not to get his fingers stuck in the tail gate of his truck.

Then I remembered all the other warnings I have seen on normal everyday stuff: my favourite being ‘contents is hot’ on a take away coffee cup!

I also started to realise, well I have realised for some time, that the end of Darwinian evolution has come, as natural selection in the human race is definitely a thing of the past (If you want to watch a really average- yet a little bit scary comedy movie about this have a look at the movie “Idiocracy“).

So back to the pinch point.

Firstly I just like saying pinch point, it has a good ring about it.

But do we really need to be warned about every pinch point in our lives. Doesn’t it sometimes pay to get your fingers caught so that you won’t do it again.

Do all the pinch points in our lives need signs.  Are we really that dumb.

I suppose when you think about not only the signs in factories but that some of the machines are set up so that you have to press buttons with both hands to activate it, so that you wont cut your hands off!  (strange thing about that is I first saw those machine buttons in the Eminem movie * Mile…. go figure?)  Maybe we are that dumb.  Or maybe we just don’t notice.

And what good are the signs anyway, if we don’t read them and definitely don’t obey them!  I suppose the two buttons on the factory press had to be put there because people kept cutting their hands off.

So there might be a lot of signs in the world warning us of the bleeding obvious, but perhaps they are necessary when we are wandering around most of the time on auto-pilot.  However, one of the reasons we don’t put our hand into a flame is because at one time or another we go burnt.  Maybe the pinch points in our lives are not supposed to be avoided; well not all of them anyway.

I know one thing.  As I get older the memories of getting my fingers jammed in the car when I was a kid are a good lesson to watch out when I close the car door, and any other door come to think of it (real and metaphoric!).

I don’t mind the pinch points in life.  And I do genuinely believe that most things that don’t kill you make you stronger (except the ones of course that maim you for the rest of your life…).  Avoiding the pinch points shows that you may have learned something, become a little better and perhaps a little wiser.  Having signs everywhere, just makes us better at blaming others when mistakes are made because someone forgot to put up a sign.

Remember….. no running with scissors!