Two things you should know about the road where I live.
It’s so narrow that Amy Adams couldn’t fit through it without a pair of pilot cars and “over-sized load” signs. And if the tight fit wasn’t enough to make a new driver cry, somebody decided that this road designed for the Lollipop Guild crowd needed a set of S curves.
It was the first thing my neighbors told me about when I got there. Stay out of our snacks and watch out for the S curves.
“How do I get through it,” I asked nervously.
“Follow the sign, go slow and stay to the right.”
I didn’t believe the yellow sign when I saw it at first. I thought it was cute how slow these country bumpkins wanted me to go.
I’m supposed to go 5 mph? Tectonic plates shift faster than that.
Keep right, the sign said.
And then I went around the curves the first time. And I then I imagined another truck meeting me somewhere in the middle, resulting in the use of a spatula to get scrape my Camry off his grill.
So I was so careful at first, driving like a grandma during rush hour. I inched along while hugging the right each time, no matter how stupid the neighbors thought I looked.
Each day as nothing happened, it got easier to go a little faster, to move inch-by-inch toward the center.
Then I could feel a tiny alarm go off in my head, warning me to be careful. And I slowed down again, not wanting to be that guy who took one head on for State Farm.
Each day on my way to work, I couldn’t help but think this could be a chapter from “Object Lessons for Dummies — The Mike Henneke Edition.”
It must have been one of those times when I heard this from Thomas S. Monson.
The Prophet Joseph declared, “Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God.” 5
Let us walk these clearly defined paths. To help us do so we can follow the shortest sermon in the world. It can be found on a common traffic sign. It reads, “Keep Right.” (Priesthood session, Aprill 1999 General Conference.)
I bet he got that from my old, yellow sign.