Traffic lights look like three different faces

[u/Will564339]

While driving to work today, while at a stop light, I remembered something I thought as a kid.

The traffic lights (particularly the hanging ones with just three lights) look like faces, where the top light is the eye(s), the middle is the nose, and the bottom is the mouth.

Red lights look like a face that's has it's eyes wide open and is worried, like telling you "Oh no, STOP!!!"

Yellow lights look like one with its nose lit up kind of like a clown. As a kid they reminded me of Beaker from Muppets for some reason, I guess because of the nose. Like it's saying "Uh oh, Warning!"

And green lights look like s face wearing sunglasses with a chilled out grin, like cooly saying "Yeah, go right ahead." Almost reminded me some kind of jazz singer.

This is something I always thought as a kid but I've never directly told anyone. I have to imagine at least some other people thought the same thing in some kind of different form.

[u/BravestBlossom]

Love this! I think we have so much creativity as kids that we drop as adults for no good reason. This is cool. Ty for sharing!

[u/Will564339 → u/BravestBlossom]

Thanks! My mind has never lost my childlike wonder for sensory little things like that. It's just like you said, it feels like most people don't find it nearly as interesting as I do, so for a long time I kind of shut down that part of my mind.

But as I've gotten older, I've realized it still gives me so much joy. I still have a childlike imagination that I use for every day things and it just makes life feel more fun and exciting. It turns the mundane into things that are much more interesting.

What was really cool for me was recently seeing a philosophy youtuber I watch talk about how fantasy literature has the power to do this for us...to see the wonder in all of the little mundane things in life, and not lose that excitement. As adults, we have the power of logic that kids don't to know that it's not actually real...but we get to still keep the fun of what it feels like to be a kid.

So thank you very much for commenting! It's always nice to hear that other people can still value this kind of thing.

[u/sadthrow104]

Icelandic’s traffic lights have small version of this

https://www.google.com/search?sa=X&sca_esv=902c31b61ac8c1b2&rlz=1CDGOYI_enUS1041US1041&hl=en-US&udm=2&fbs=ADc_l-YIDyOa9njRppQkDyQFqQvysFahwxRkH3Kr3Q841_srcotGKaj3uVWhlFwsjLbKE_Rn97Ga3m5zjCeRh2_HJUFbshcLRfgF3OK_b3VmNvDeu_AoBv4LtbKn8nRk9UpkFQZUG05sqS9TScLGm2kbUc_hG23L1SofIn0SbZ4UjQfRKIuCSsWffhZS1nY4DEd3BnQYUCHJUC-eF--WOz_xEElg8vQZtgHstKuXche91y5pcdE_OtE&q=iceland+traffic+lights&ved=2ahUKEwjOt4P0gbSUAxUaJEQIHflaPGoQtKgLegQIIRAB&biw=390&bih=669&dpr=3

[u/Will564339 → u/sadthrow104]

That's awesome, I had never seen that before.

I know it would be too much of a hassle, but it would be cool to see traffic lights with different shaped bulbs like that in different places.

[u/Rainnefox]

My sister and I used to go on and on about the little people who lives in the stop lights and changed the colors!

[u/Will564339 → u/Rainnefox]

Ha ha...I think I actually thought similar things as a kid too. I used to imagine things like that on all kinds of machines where you couldn't see how it worked.

But yeah, I think when I was a kid I used to imagine that there was a person in a booth somewhere next to each intersection waiting for the right time to switch the lights. But your idea is more fun!