North is north and south is south and the DOT knows the difference

Do you ever get something on your mind and just can't seem to let it go?

Like when some song starts playing in your head and plays over and over and over. Sometimes you sing it aloud and sometimes it just seems like you're singing it. It gets to the point where you don't realize what you're doing until someone says, "Will you please SHUT UP!"

Or perhaps something at work is on your mind and you're lying in bed tossing and turning thinking about whatever it is that's bothering you. The more you try to get it out of your mind, the more it worries you.

Now I've gone and done it. Just writing about songs getting stuck in your mind and not being able to sleep at night brought an old familiar tune to mind and now I can't shake it:

I couldn't sleep at all last night

Just a thinking of you.

Baby things weren't right

Well I was tossin and turning

Turning and tossin

Tossin and turnin all night.

It's not often that I toss and turn all night, but it happens.

I can recall those Saturday nights after a Gamecock loss where I'd lie in bed replaying those crucial downs where a catch here or tackle there could have changed the outcome of the game.

Or a Sunday night thinking about that afternoon's golf, agonizing over a missed 3-foot putt or an opponent's chip-in birdie on the last hole.

As I've matured (?), I don't let those things keep me awake at night. Perhaps I've become resigned to the fact that we will always be a play or two away from winning the big game or I will be a putt or two away from winning the big tournament.

No, now my mind is consumed with much more important things.

And I have my wife to thank for that.

For the past week, she has been consumed with worry about the new state highway signs that have been installed along Hwy. 11.

In several locations heading north towards Chesnee, the sign reads "Hwy. 11 SOUTH."

In close proximity, heading south towards Gaffney, the signs read "Hwy. 11 NORTH."

"Did you see them?" she asked me every day last week when I got home from work.

For the first several days, I had forgotten to look. I don't usually pay much attention to highway signs when I'm traveling familiar territory. Finally after about a week I was able to answer in the affirmative when Sherry asked me if I had seen the signs.

"Well, what are you going to do about it?"

I answered her question like I do others when I'm not sure how to respond.

"What do you want me to do about it"?

She wanted me to take a picture and put it in the paper.

I did her one better; I'm writing a column about it and just got off the phone with the S.C. Department of Transportation office here in Gaffney.

The woman I spoke with knew what I wanted as soon as I said something about the new signs on Hwy. 11.

Turns out they are correct. Even though a compass may show you're headed north when driving towards Chesnee, the "Hwy. 11. SOUTH" designation is correct. Odd number highways are NORTH and SOUTH and even numbers are EAST and WEST. At points on Hwy. 11 going towards Chesnee you are actually heading north, but at the termination of the highway you end up south of where you started.

There was a mistake, though, with some earlier signs which had Hwy. 11 East and West. Those have since been replaced. I don't know why Sherry didn't notice that, but at least I have an explanation for the North-South confusion that has been bugging her for the past couple of weeks. That's what we journalists do — seek to bring order to the confused.

Now, if I can just get this darn song out of my head, maybe I can get some sleep.

Cody Sossamon (cody@gaffneyledger.com) is publisher of The Gaffney Ledger.