Rules Sux

I’m friends with a random add on Facebook called Piggie VonEspie. Piggie is a corgi that lives in San Clemente, California with her pet hoomans. She likes to spend her time sleeping, window snozzling, going on corgi hill hikes and car rides and hoarding socks. What I love about Piggie (apart for her mischievous nature and playful barking) is that she often has intelligent words games as her status.

Today’s game was this:

‘Let’s play WORD SCRAMBLE – just change one letter of the word before. Today’s word is: SLEEP’

Being based in the US, the word game has often been going for a few hours by the time my small piece of Sydney wakes up. So, SLEEP went to Steep, went to Leapt and so on until I added Realm after Cream. The next word was ‘Please’

Now, I may have spent a small amount of time studying the English language, and I’m pretty sure that Please, could in no way come after realm. For starters it has six letters rather than five, I’d rather not go too deeply into what’s wrong with this...but I’m sure you can see a few things too.

Anyway...my point on this is all about following instructions and rules.

Why is it so hard for people to do so? Of course I speak generally here, but as I drove into work this morning in the pouring rain and low visibility, so many were ignoring the road rule that says turn on your lights in adverse weather...of course you can guarantee that these same people have their fog lights on when there is a clear sky.

Why is it that I always get pulled over by the RBT (Random Breath Tests) because I follow the rules; slow down give room, when I see flashing lights. I get stopped because this is classed as suspicious. If I powered through without a pause, I’d be fine.

There seems to be confusion caused by rules and instructions. We’re told they are there for our own good, to help us live a safe and productive life. Most of the time I would agree that they are. It’s safer to drive with lights on. It’s safer not to smoke in an enclosed space, whiles it’s undoubtedly safer not to smoke at all. It easier if you follow the instructions provided with the flat pack. It’s easier for the next person to place the next word in the sequence if you don’t completely stuff it up. Sometimes however, confusion, frustration and danger is caused because there are simply so many rules and instructions to follow that we forget.

It was so much easier when there were only ten.