Today’s topic is:
How to Hang a Sign on a Bulletin Board
If you have something to advertise but don’t want to pay exorbitant advertising fees, bulletin boards are an excellent way to get the word out, especially if you’re anti-social. And unlike with newspapers and magazines, you apparently don’t have to worry about bad grammar, your total misunderstanding of how commas work and your tendency to use “unnecessary” quotation marks.
Where to Hang Your Sign
In general, you can pretty much hang your sign anywhere that has a bulletin board, such as the local pizza shop, the supermarket, your shul’s coatroom or your child’s classroom. Don’t worry about anything that the teacher has up there. Just hang things over it.
What Your Sign Should Say
Some popular choices are:
• People looking for a new roommate, along with requirements pretty much outlining what was wrong with their previous roommate: “Must be non-smoker, neat and know how to take proper phone messages, Chanie.”
• A new, exciting shiur, given either at a time you’re already at a shiur, or at a time when there’s no way you’re getting out of bed.
• Someone who gives some kind of lesson in their house, such as piano lessons, because the overhead of schlepping a grand piano around would be ridiculous.
• Someone selling a used car, which, judging by the mileage and the current condition, he has used to drive to Eretz Yisroel and back. Under the ocean.
• A sign advertising an exciting upcoming event, such as a parlor meeting. Even though no one you know has a parlor, unless their home was built before 1903. You’re not even sure what a parlor is, and you’re tempted to go, just to find out.
How to Hang Your Sign
This isn’t easy, because there are eight million signs, and no shul has ever said, “You know what we need? A bigger bulletin board.”
Personally, I don’t like covering other people’s signs, because deep down I believe that everyone will be nice to me if I’m nice to them, which I guess is a little bit like assuming that a lion won’t eat you because you haven’t eaten him. So I often stick my sign on the very bottom of the bulletin board—at the perfect height to be seen by toddlers—jutting out significantly on at least two sides of the board and hanging on for dear life. And then someone tapes their sign to the bottom of my sign.
Supplies You’ll Need
A lot of people don’t bother bringing supplies. We’ve all seen people pull thumbtacks out of other people’s flyers, and I once saw six different flyers hanging from the same thumbtack.
So I always bring:
• Thumbtacks, which are a lot of fun to carry around in your back pocket.
• Transparent adhesive tape, in case you have to tape your paper to the bottom of someone else’s.
• A hammer and nails, just in case.
When to Hang Your Sign
Good luck with that. Usually, while we’re holding a pile of signs, plus the thumbtacks, the tape, the hammer and the nails and trying to also use both hands to move other people’s signs that are dangling by one thumbtack so we can hang ours, we’re in the way of several people who are trying to read the signs, and they’re not going to move until we’re done, because they’re curious to see what kind of awesome sign it’s taking us five minutes to hang up, like we’re giving away free money to the first person who blocks the sign. I feel like the guy bringing out the new pan of cholent at a kiddush. Everyone wants first crack at it, but no one’s willing to get out of the way so I can put it down.
So there’s no good time to hang your sign. Especially if you’re trying to do so in multiple venues. You could go from shul to shul during tefillos, but then when are you going to daven? Do you have to hang up one sign per night over 20 nights? Your other option is to break into shuls when no one’s there.
So that’s what most of us do. It’s like the shady underside of the shul—people figuring out the door code and running into unfamiliar shuls in the dark to see if they can find where the shul hides their bulletin board. You’d think if there was no one in the shul, it’d be easier to find parking.
The most awkward thing is when you sneak in to hang up a sign, and you find someone else hanging his.
Taking Down Your Sign
As far as you’re concerned, your sign never needs to come down. It’ll just get buried, eventually.
But once in a while someone goes around and takes down all the flyers. Usually this is done immediately after I hang mine.
By Mordechai Schmutter
