Grammar, People!

I went to the dentist this morning (8am to be precise) and on the way back home I noticed yet another billboard assaulting us with the phrase "A mind is a terrible thing to waste." Now, there were a lot of bad things about the design of this ad- one of them being that the print is so small that you just may wreck your car while trying to read it. I saw it from afar- a large black board with an empty white thought balloon floating in the middle. Underneath the balloon I could see white type. What it said was a mystery, because it was the equivalent of looking at the very bottom line of a 20/20 eye chart- at 40 feet away. The print finally became large enough to read at about the time I was passing it on the highway. I could barely catch the message as I drove past, but to my horror, I thought I saw the phrase, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste." Let me point out the problem here. The person or organization that slapped up this billboard on highway 74 is (I assume) trying to spur us to some sort of action regarding education. However, the phrase is grammatically incorrect. A mind is NOT a terrible thing to waste. It is a wonderful and complex thing. It is a mysterious and sublime thing. It is not-as asserted by this billboard-a terrible thing. If you would like to tell me that it is a terrible thing to waste a mind, then I might agree with you. It would be a wasteful thing to waste a mind as well. But- we are left with this thought. There was no website at the bottom of the board to connect us to an organization that is fighting the waste of minds. No "www.saveamind.org". So we are left only with the thought. For people like me, who try to avoid the waste of minds (and money), this is a slightly irritating investment on someone's part. Thank you for reminding me not to waste minds. I will do my best. For the person who may be wasting their mind, they are left with no recourse. There is no help here. Only a problem presented and left in the air. Maybe the mind wasting person will now take the next left and head to the library- but I don't know. Without some direction, they probably won't know what to do in order to not waste their mind. And honestly, they probably didn't read the sign because it was so small that anyone who reads slower than me (and I'm a fast reader) would not have been able to absorb the message before it was here and gone. So I want to say to you- Mr. Billboard Designer- please, don't waste your mind. Go buy a copy of Strunk and White and brush up on your grammar.