Interesting how one's eye will be

drawn to various things. I find myself reading license plates and bumper stickers. Both of those can say things about the driver, or the car owner. For a brief period in my history, I had a personalized license plate that included my initials. It was an idea and gift from my husband at the time.

I liked the idea and kept that plate for a few years. Then we divorced and I changed my name, giving up his surname for my original surname. Well, that license plate no longer worked, and I went back to an ordinary plate.

I wonder, though, if folk tried to figure out what that plate 'meant'. It didn't actually mean anything except what it was. Yet, I look at personalized plates and try to 'read' them, or maybe decipher is better description. Yeah, it's one way to pass time at a red light.

Then bumper stickers are interesting because you can probably determine the driver's political or religious leanings. I have couple on my car and that's what they're about, alright.

Saw one this morning I liked: "If the fetus you save is gay, will you still support its rights?" An interesting twist in the right-to-life question. The answer, of course, is that fetus has a right to life--then we can try to save it for the right type life, right? Don't get me started.

Listening some to the public radio fund raising this week, and thinking about how we still say 'dial' a phone number (they repeat the phone numbers about a 1,000 times an hour so you can't miss it!). Most of us haven't 'dialed' phones for a long time; even before cell phones we were using push button phones, not rotary. Somehow 'push' or 'press' the number didn't become the phrase. Guess we just switched to 'call', a more generic turn of phrase for using the phone to contact someone.

But there it is, left over from early telephone use, 'dial' the number. Guess the telephone was the ubiquitous communication method we relied on. I read books from or about earlier times in history and someone will 'wire' someone else. Guess you can still 'wire' someone. I don't recall ever receiving a 'wire' and I've never sent one. But I've been 'dialed' or 'dialed' someone else thousands of times.

If we're connecting and communicating, probably doesn't matter how we describe it. But if words interest you, you find yourself thinking about how they're used.