Just for fun
At any rate, I got the idea to hold a sign myself. Strange I know considering the above. However, my sign will be different. I have elected to create a large sign that says, “I will not dance or wave while holding this sign”. I figure it will be interesting to see what sort of response I get. In my experiments I plan on standing on an unused street corner. By unused I mean it will be vacant of other sign holders. Experiment two will involve finding a corner occupied by one of my rivals, in the hops to offset his sign.
At the bottom of my sign I will put an email address I made up just for this experiment and the URL to this page so I can post the responses.
If you are here as a result of my sign you can shoot me an email justforfun [at] scribdog [dot] com or leave a comment bellow.
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My adventure in sign holding went well. The message on the sign changed a bit due to the amount of space I was allocated and the desirability for it to be readable from across a street. As you can see I elected for a more simplistic message.
I’m quite certain that the URL I placed at the bottom of the sign will not produce the comments I was after. Oh well there was plenty of other things to learn and observe.
On my sign supply run, I made sure to scope out the street corners I normally see the more… exuberant people. This was so I could benefit from there enthusiasm. Unfortunately those guys were not out in their full force. However, my intended victim, if you can call it that, was a guy dressing very patriotically. He was selling tax preparation services.
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Once I got home I got to work on my sign. As you can see I chose ‘sloppy computer geek’ for my font, at least it’s readable. I drove to the chosen corner, and much to my dismay the patriotic fellow was not there. Not all was lost however, I noticed on the other side of the street was another sign holder. This person did not excrete the energy that wanted, but perhaps toning it down on my first run at this would allow me to feel it out before I found a person in a hot dog costume flailing about.
I parked my vehicle and turned on my extroverted personality for the task at hand. As I made it to the street corner I found that I would be accompanying this corner with a female sign holder. Considering I find myself more comfortable around females than males anyway, I figured this was perfect. As it turns out my fellow sign holder was exceptionally pleasant to talk with. Initially I could see her mind work with two separate thoughts.
Thought one: “Am I going to have to run soon?”
Thought two: “Hey that’s funny!”
She calmed down once I showed her what my sign said, and told her why I was doing it.
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My first try at educating the town with the fact that “I’m just holding this sign” was producing a nice conversation as I got to know more about D. I’m calling my fellow sign holder D because I want to protect her anonymity, as you can see in the picture I blurred her face out at her request.
When her phone rang, her mom wasn’t all to sure what to think of her daughter standing on a street corner with a guy concerned with educational purposes. She seemed to have fun with it.
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Interestingly enough I picked the right time and busy street corner during a power outage, so the signal lights didn’t work at all. This is when I learned an interesting fact that most can agree with. When a signal light doesn’t work, they don’t all know to treat it as a stop sign. There was lots of honking as people who knew what to do were upset with those that did not. This had an adverse effect with my sign adventure, as the traffic was to preoccupied with figuring out “who goes next” and dealing with the people that don’t care “who goes next”, not a lot of attention was paid to my sign.
Fortunately, while the traffic was dealing with its melodrama, I learned another interesting fact. Sign holders, according to D, get paid quite well. I was expecting minimum wage at least, but as it turns out it’s substantially more. I will not disclose the mount or hours to keep with discretion.
Once the lights were working and life on the road, to here and there, was functioning as expected, I was able to get more reactions. I found that most people will not pay attention to you at all and in fact will choose to ignore you. There was plenty of people that didn’t have that phobia and elected to smile and rubber neck around to make sure they read the sign correctly. One vehicle occupant even had the desire to take a picture, and the pleasant nature to ask. Naturally I allowed, and made sure they knew the URL to the page you’re reading now. Another vehicle was so full of male testosterone they decided that vulgarity was appropriate.
All in all I had a good time. I enjoyed the conversation I had with D, and in fact would not have been on the corner for an hour and a half had she not been there. And I hope to have future correspondence with her. Also, I enjoyed the looks, smiles, and the frown in educating the public that I was just there holding a sign.
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