Sign of the Times

It's a sign of the times
That my love for you is getting so much stronger
It's a sign of the times
And I know that I won't have to wait much longer

I hate that song, but often find it stuck in my head. It's one of those stupid pandering-to-daft-and-overly-romantic-teenage-girlies songs that was so common in the 50s and 60s. "I know you're bound to propose to me at any moment now, even though you act like a jerk and treat me like I don't matter, because I can just feel it. I'm so emotionally caught up in you that I just know you feel the same way about me even though you are carefully disguising it as extreme indifference."

Ugh.

Anyway, it wasn't actually my intention to write about that song (curse it's catchy tune!) but rather sign writing.

I briefly worked as a sign writer's assistant while studying for my graduate diploma, and every now and then I miss it.

Strange, really, considering I wasn't any good at it. Turns out that a lack of attention to detail, poor time management skills and limited manual dexterity do not make for being a good sign writer.

My boss (a fine man - one of my favourite people in the world, but so darn eccentric he makes me look normal), valiantly put up with me for the three months he said he would, but made it perfectly clear sign writing was not the job for me. He rarely said it directly, of course, but would often look at me and say "You'll make a fine librarian." It took a while for me to work out he actually was saying "give up your day job", but then I've never been the sharpest pencil in the draw.

I love being a librarian, but every now and then I'll look at a sign and remember what it was like to be behind those things - surrounded by fonts and designs, with the smell of all sorts of different things in the air, feeling the sense of achievement that comes from making something with my hands...

Sure, my spacial awareness leaves something to be desired, and my ability to count isn't good enough to compensate for it. Okay, I have about as much control over my hands as apes have over their feet. And I will grant that my inability to keep track of time is something of an issue in an industry where you bill people according to how much time you've spent on their job.

But on the other hand, I never once cut myself. I consider that to be something of an achievement, considering I was carrying knives around in my back pocket. And I never once accidentally wrote on my hand with that thing that looks like a pen but is actually a needle. Given the fact that I'm usually the biggest klutz on the face of the earth, I think this proves I have some potential for improvement.

I like to think that, eventually, I could make a somewhat competent sign writer. Plus, I only ever worked with vinyl, and part of me is just itching to do something involving wood or 3D effects. I used to borrow my boss' SignCraft magazines and think about how wonderful it would be to work up to the point of making some of the good signs.

My boss never let me near anything terribly complicated, though. Not even paint. Probably because I usually stuffed it up, which was kind of expensive.

A girl can dream, though, can't she?