"HELEN!!!!!!!!!!"

Say what you want about the teeth, the food, the constant drunkenness, and the unsettling obsession with ceremony, but the British have fantastic emergency exit signs. The United States of America is supposed to be the land of opportunity, where the streets are paved with gold, where anybody can become president someday, and where clouds rain puppies—but I don’t think our emergency exit signs reflect our mission. For those of you who are not American I should explain that, unlike the mirthful British signs, the American signs say quite simply “EXIT” in the same, uniform lettering, and they usually glow a sinister red or green. They’re almost German in their efficiency.

Now for my American readers I should probably explain what emergency exit signs look like here.
Basically it is a silhouette man making a mad dash for the exit.

I’d like to imagine this poor silhouette man running from the flames in a state of complete, pants-shitting terror. “You guys, we have to get the fuck out of here!” he seems to say. “It’s gone all backdraft!” he seems to add. Forgetting all the fire drills they practiced in the land of silhouettes that exist on various signs, he makes a sprinting beeline for the exit and bowls over small children in the process. At this point the animalistic instinct to preserve his own life takes over, and he finds himself practically frothing at the mouth like a rabid beast and plowing through a crowd of silhouette people who have gotten between him and the exit, like he's one of the less classy men on the Titanic.

While being the first to admit that I usually read into things far too much, I’d like to hope that designers, like me, had a full backstory for the poor man on the sign fleeing the flames. Maybe he isn’t the selfish, fearful man that I think he is. Maybe he’s married to the silhouette woman from public restroom signs (yeah, you’d think she’s married to the men’s restroom silhouette man, but that’s because you’re such a racist), and he’s actually fleeing quickly because he wants to make sure his wife, who’s in another area of the building, is okay.

Although the silhouette man does find her eventually, she’s tragically trapped in an upper floor of the building. “Take care of the children, darling!” she calls out from the window, with a stoical look on her blank, silhouette face as the flames climb higher. “HELEN, NOOOOOO!” her husband screams as the silhouette firefighters usher him away. They try to wrap him in a blanket, and he throws it off, raving like a madsilhouetteman, “WHY? WHY? NOOOOO! HELEN! WHY, SILHOUETTE GOD? WHY?”

Hmm. Yeah, I’m probably reading too much into those signs.