Today I traveled to Northern Cass High School for the first meeting of the semester of their Teen CERT class.  My program at NDSU partners with local emergency management folks to deliver this program in area high schools.  Teen CERT – which stands for Community Emergency Response Team –  is a great program that teaches youth some basic response skills and how to make sound decisions when it comes to risk.  The program is presented one day a week throughout the semester and ends in a mock emergency event that allows the students to test out their new skills.  The event is usually quite realistic and the high school kids always rise to the occasion.  Teen CERT  empowers the kids, provides the school with a cadre of students who are better equipped to deal with an emergency incident and is free to the schools- what’s not to love?

Anyway, that wasn’t  where I was going with this blog…I digress.  On my way back from Northern Cass I saw the following billboard message on the right side of I-29:

Where are you going?
Heaven or Hell

That billboard startled me.  I thought it was a fairly big question to ask folks to ponder as they are clipping along at 75 miles per hour.  It distracted me so that it made me wonder if I would be going to one of those places forthwith.

About the time I regained my composure from the first billboard I saw a second billboard on the left side of I-29 that said,

Have a great day!

Not sure if that “great day” was going to happen while I was contemplating where I might be spending eternity…and I was sure that it wasn’t going to happen if I got in an accident and hastily discovered in which direction my life path had taken me…especially if I was fast-tracked to the tropics.

I had to laugh at the proximity of the two billboards though and it caused me to wonder the rest of the way home how many folks who passed these two billboards pondered the same silly things I did when they read them.  Did they actually already know their destination point after life on earth and respond to the first billboard’s query – be it in their own head or out loud to the universe?  Did they totally ignore the billboard’s query?  Or were they like me, thinking intently about the question?  And what did they make of the second billboard? I surmise if they thought they were going to heaven the second billboard only reinforced their goodness – like a voice from on high – telling them to have a great day.  Conversely, if they thought they were going to hell the second billboard seemed to denote that they should carry on with similar activities as those that had guaranteed their spot in hell.  Either way, they both seem to be talking to drivers in a way that political, restaurant and lodging billboards do not and I can’t help but believe that they get folks’ attention.

They got mine for the remainder of the 20 minute drive and still here in this blog.  Unfortunately, when it was all said and done all I could conclude to any moral certainty about my destination was that today my destination was West Fargo…as for eternity, well…let’s see how great a day I have! 😉

Day four hundred and forty-three of the new forty – obla di obla da

Ms. C