In a world where brevity is so important that people abbreviate three letter words (for example, “1 C bread flour or all purpose flour,” come on, if you’re going to go through the whole “bread or all purpose flour” bit in your recipe you can spell out CUP (sheesh)) it is no wonder some people distill their entire life philosophies onto license plates. So much so that I managed to expand those abbreviated thoughts into several thousand words over five posts, Walls O’ Wisdom, UDNTSAY, Mobile Philosophy, Writing on the Walls, and T(-Shirt) is for Thinking. (All good stuff by the way. You should call them up and read or read again if you’re so inclined and I should say you should be.) Maybe it’s been going on for ages but I only recently discovered another outlet for the “let me tell you about my life” crowd, the welcome mat.
I’ve had welcome mats all my life and most of them have said something, not surprisingly usually “WELCOME.” Around the holidays I often replace that with others that sport fallen leaves, Christmas scenes or Easter Bunnies, but by and large the message outside my door is “Hi, come on it” even if not in so many words. Apparently there are people who will make a mat that says just that in just that many words and much else.
Living in a townhouse community where most front doors are right there off the main sidewalk, my morning walks through the neighborhood expose me to what people put on and about their front doors. Mostly I admire the wreaths and door adornments but today I focused on the foot of the doors (foots of the doors? feet of the doors? bottoms of the doors!) What I saw there was a wide array of sentiment from “Dogs Welcomed/People Tolerated” to “Wipe Your Feet!” to “Please Hide Packages From Husband.” Out of 50 or 60 door mats I passed, only a handful, mine being one of those, bore the single word “WELCOME” although a good number boasted simliar sentiment like “Hello,” “Come In,” and one “Home Sweet Home.”
The mats that conveyed more complex feelings than “Hey, How Ya Doing” were the ones that got me thinking. Where do these all come from? Some I’ve seen in stores. The moronic, ironic “Go Away!” must have been a recent clearance item somewhere because I noted about a half dozen of those and I can’t imagine anybody paying full price whatever the price might be for that. But many had to be custom made, the aforementioned hide the package from hubby and another that had me giggling (I hope I remember the wording right), “If you ever want to see these people again bring five pounds of hamburger in a plain brown wrapper. Signed, The Dog.” Who thinks these things and then who turns those thoughts into 18 x 30 inches of foot level text. I have to find out because I think (some of) these people are brilliant.
Some of my favorites including what I dubbed the Hubby and Dog mats were “Run While You Still Can,” “Hi, I’m Mat,” “What are you looking at?” and “Get Your Feet Off Me!” I give special tribute to those with the most welcoming message of all, those who know some people are just as happy to leave, to wit:
.
The Real Reality Show Blog 
My favourite is one I saw years ago. “Come back with a warrant.” cheers
😅 I can just picture them if somebody did!