THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 8, 1996 TAG: 9607060017
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: OPINION
SOURCE: George Hebert
LENGTH: 51 lines
When prehistoric humans invented wooden shafts with stone, bone or shell points on their ends, the devices - whether spears, darts propelled by throwing sticks or arrows shot from bows - affected people's lives in large ways.
In the nonviolent sense, too, that invention - through a graphic adaptation - still plays a huge role in our lives. Where would we be, in fact, without that remarkable, everyday tool, the arrow symbol?
Lost, too much of the time, for sure.
The straight line with a triangle for a point at one end, guides us in all kinds of situations. And out of lostness more often than not.
The graphic arrow, whether shaped with ink in a book, or white paint in a road lane, or by grooves marked hastily in dirt or sand, tells us more in an instant than whole sentences of words could. We can be told to turn right or left or in between, to note such-and-such a part of a document, to flip a page, to go this way or that down hospital corridors to find a room or the cafeteria, to move a computer cursor in a useful direction.
It's interesting to speculate as to how the first arrow symbols came to be drawn. Perhaps some paleo hunter laid an arrow on the ground to give an associate a line of direction to something. Outlining the arrow point - quite probably making it larger - would have been a logical evolutionary step.
But who knows?
The practical, happy fact is that the primitive arrow lives as a unique, nonverbal part of humankind's written language. And it continues to serve us faithfully in its transmuted form, advising us which way to untwist a bottle cap, notifying handlers of fragile packages as to which side should stay up, pointing out (with spray-paint lines) important underground features to street tearer-uppers - for a few more examples of the hundreds and hundreds of useful visual nudges we get in all corners of our lives.
And one of the most helpful of all, I might throw in here, consists of a panel of arrows on metal shields, posted well ahead of an important street intersection. These show you which lane to get into to make the turn or nonturn that will put or keep you on the right path.
Of course, this is one road position - with the directional signs up in the air on some pole or overhead frame instead of flat on the pavement - in which old-friend arrow could confuse if taken literally.
For the arrow indicating the straight-ahead route isn't aimed that way at all. It's pointed at the sky.
But our faithful guide still doesn't really let us down. Most of us have learned to live with that little fib. MEMO: Mr. Hebert, a former editor, lives in Norfolk. by CNB