"For Better Air, Carpool Tomorrow"

Every morning I have about a 25-30 minute commute to work and school. Only this morning did I realize JUST how many ways I can be influenced by some kind of media in that amount of time! There are billboards and other types of advertisement signs alongside the roads, the radio, CD’s I could possibly listen to, among many others. The first sign I noticed made me laugh. It was one of those digital marquee boards on the freeway that says “For Better Air, Carpool Tomorrow”. Hilarious right?? Haha, ok I know it normally wouldn’t be. But seeing that sign reminded me of the time that I was playing Telestrations with my husband’s family. If you don’t know what Telestrations is, let me inform you. :)

 

Telestrations is a game where everyone starts out with a piece of paper and they have to draw an item that they have chosen, but nobody else knows what it is. Once they draw that item, they pass it on to the next person and that person has to write out in words what they think it is a picture of. Then that person passes just the words onto the next person. That receiver then draws what the previous person wrote down. And then you continue that cycle of drawing and writing until it makes a full circle back to you. At that point everyone takes turns showing everyone else how the very first topic evolved into the very last picture. Every once in a while it would be dead on, but USUALLY it would take a very funny twist and end up being something completely different. In a way this game is a little bit like the Telephone game. Wait, I think that might be why it’s called Telestrations!! Wow…I am a genius. 

What does this have to do with anything you might ask? Well, the reason I laughed when I saw that sign is because when we were playing that game, one of the topics was Freeway. My father-in-law was the one that had to draw it, and he chose to put on his picture the sign that said, “For Better Air, Carpool Tomorrow”. We all got a kick out of that and it has been a family joke ever since. I thought it was a very clever clue to help the next person guess what he had drawn (although I think he cheated a little bit because we weren’t supposed to use words in our drawings...lol).

 Long story short, the media is so prevalent in our lives, that in this case it was used as a symbol to help others understand what the big picture was. And what’s interesting is that we ALL understood his reference to that sign. Cool right?

Rather than risking my life by taking a picture while driving, below is a similar sign to get the "picture" ;)