knew that word, used to be quite racy. Vulgar terms were de rigueur except for the simple “so-and-so loves so-and-so” heart-and-arrow stuff.
Now, for whatever reason, walls of restrooms and walls and doors of toilet stalls hardly ever get defaced with any scrawled words or cartoons, pornographic or not.
DISCLAIMER: I speak only for women’s restrooms, although I frequent a few that are not gender-specific in places that provide just one. They are unremarkable.
So what has happened? Well, I think one motive of the restroom graffiti set (as opposed to railroad car embellishers) was to shock whomever. Now our shock standards have changed.
Case in point: When I was a child, maybe 7 or 8, I read a word that had been scratched on the door of a restroom stall at the municipal auditorium. It was “SEX.”
My mother was appropriately taken aback and told me it was a word I shouldn’t say.
Yep, times have changed. Sex has lost its shock value every whichaway.
For that matter, it’s also gotten harder and harder to dress immodestly. I think you’d just have to take it all off if you want to be noticed. Just saying.
Back to graffiti.
Watching railroad cars has gotten to be more intriguing. When I was a child, the best image was a rocky mountain goat logo that went by fairly often when my parents and I had to stop at the railroad crossing. Watching the freight trains was primarily a lesson in reading company names. Trains moved slower then (by law) so a kid like me had time to read all the words unless they were really hard.
Now trains whiz by, and the cars quite often feature some really fancy word art. I’m favorably impressed that the outlaw artists typically decorate the railcars with undecipherable artsy words instead of vulgar images.
Yes, call them artists. The graffiti is whimsical, bold, colorful, decorative and more interesting than that stalwart mountain goat. In my youth I suspect I would have found the graffiti fun to decipher. The adult me likes to try.
The glorification of the railcar graffitist (stereotypically a gifted youngster from a socially disadvantaged neighborhood; hence his need for an expressive outlet — and yes, they seem to all be guys) is matched by the glorification of the same sort of graffiti on walls and buildings.
The downside? Spray painters of graffiti get society’s unofficial stamp of approval when random graffiti is admired or when the art morphs into non-random graffiti, like when it’s officially commissioned. It’s all getting to be a bit too much. More is more.
And when bricks are the “canvas,” good luck ever getting the paint off. Bricks are tough, but their surfaces are delicate.
The latest: The spray-painted word “Jesus” and some spraypainted crosses are defacing
Hanaba Munn Welch is a veteran correspondent and columnist who unfailingly sums up her weekly thoughts in 501 words and dashes. Farm life often inspires her writing. Hanaba@ copper.net
