Please consider drinking something other than booze

These signs were up at my 5th Yale reunion over the weekend on tables with bottled water and soda.  They made me laugh.  I guess they were a gesture to the non-drinkers (thin on the ground) in attendance?  "See, even though this entire weekend is structured around various opportunities to consume excesses of alcohol, we are aware you tee-totalling nerds are out there and we mean for you to feel respected and included."  Although doesn't going to a separate table to get non-alcoholic drinks make someone who's not drinking stand out more?  I do think this was outreach actually not just to non-drinkers but to the attendees who were thirsty and might otherwise have decided just to have a beer and a result get even drunker than they themselves had ever intended, thought possible, or dreamed of.

But what made me laugh was how the sign read to me first, which was simply as a desperate appeal to all the drunk people to PLEASE switch from alcohol to something that would make them act a little less ridiculous.  The sign can read kind of like a trick, with its classic Yale white-shoe tone ("please" printed small and in italics, avoiding an unseemly self-abasement by the institutional speaker, and distanced from the subsequent entreaty with an ellipse that allows the sign's dapper manners to sink in; "help yourself" with its pleasant whiff of some sweet hostess's chiming voice; "refreshment"'s Gatsbyesque ring, almost preparing one to be offered fizzy fresh-squeezed lemonade rather than Sprite and Yale-brand water) insinuating itself into its reader's subconscious where it creates the civilized mood conducive to catalyzing a turn off the path of increasing inebriation.

But as funny as a misreading of this sign was, I can't fault the sign itself for any actual gaffe.  Yale's official signage is never anything less than absurdly perfect and beautiful in every way.  Its publications never contain any typos.  Yale Blue is copyrighted.  There is a Yale font (which is a really good-looking font).  Ah, Yale.  It was good to be back among its lovely signs.