At one of the vistor’s center in the Smokey Mountains National Park, there’s a slab of cement with a sign posted beside it. It was a First Amendment / free speech area. I had never seen such a thing before! Neither had Mom.
I scratched my head.
“So, if you want to talk, you have to stand on the cement slab?”
Mom explained it was more political than that. There’s certain topics that other people may not want to hear about, so the only place you can talk about them and pass out papers about it was in the free speech area.
I thought that was really sad. Mom did too.
“People can get really nasty about what they feel is right,” she said.
“What are those ladies wanting to talk about?” I asked.
“It looks like the pamplets are pro-life. They don’t want people to kill their unborn babies.”
I did the math in my head: babies grow up to be kids. Kids love teddy bears. Teddy bears were made for kids to love. No babies = no teddy bears. That would be an awful thing.
“As long as we are on the topic of signs,” Dad pointed. “There was an interesting one posted on the inside of the bathroom stall.” Mom went into the ladies room to check it out and snapped a picture. She showed me.
“Who takes pictures of deer going poop?” I asked.
“You would be suprised.”
After finding out you need a concrete slab just to say your opinion, I doubted anything else could surprise me. Boy, was I wrong! The next sign was even crazier!
I stared at this sign for a while.
“So, you can’t feed animals that are feeding plants.” I summarized. “Is it ok to feed them if they don’t pick the plants?”
Mom nearly busted a gut laughing at that.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“Well, they need to say that then. It should read ‘feeding wildlife is prohibited, no matter if they are picking the plants or not.”
Then I thought of something else.
“Isn’t this park for the animals?” I asked. “How come they’re not allowed to pick their own plants? Did the rangers plant them? And how are the animals supposed to know they can’t pick the plants? Can they even read the signs? This is just so unfair!”
Mom was still laughing, but she nodded her head in agreement. That wasn’t helping. I thought she liked animals. Why was she laughing?
“Well,” I proclaimed. “If I see any animals picking the plants, I’m NOT telling the rangers about it! If they want to pick their own flowers, that’s their business.”
“Sure!” Mom agreed. She was still laughing at me.
“And I’m gonna feed them, whether or not they’re picking flowers.”
That got Mom to stop laughing.
“No, you’re not!” She was using her most serious, glaring-eyes-burning-holes-through-me look.
“But…”
She wasn’t listening.
“You’re not to feed any of the animals or pick any plants. Don’t even go near any animals you see, and you stay on the path.” Her eyes were still glaring at me.
I grumbled at her.
“If they don’t want people feeding the animals, or picking the plants, they really should put up a sign.” I stated.
Dad sighed.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “They really should do that.”