Do they shoot you if you go too fast? What else could the sign mean? It’s poorly worded and yet we are so quick to jump to the worst possible meaning. This happens all the time. Whenever words are involved. Whenever the stakes are high or appear to be high. We aren’t sure what the words we are hearing mean, so we choose the worst-case scenario. The darkest, scariest, oh-God-not-that meaning we can imagine. Why do we do this? Is it to protect ourselves from being blindsided by something terrible when we choose to hope for the best? Do these types of situations let lose other fears and dormant out-of-control feelings we thought were securely shackled and shoved deeply into the basements of our souls? And then we laugh. As if to say, no one would shoot at us from planes. That’s just silly. Ridiculous even. We hope it is. We agree with a shrug and a nod, to label this possibility, this horror story in the making as something that would never happen in our world. Our safe, predictable world. We tell each other this is what is true. We almost believe it.