Robert A. Heinlein
Bulletin Board
Our campus is not a giant, factory-size job with a particle accelerator and a two-hundred-man football squad, but it’s chummy. The chummiest thing about it is the bulletin board in Old Main. You may find a stray glove fastened up with a thumbtack, or you can pick up a baby-sitting job if a married veteran doesn’t beat you to it. Or you can buy a car cheap if you tow it from where it gave up. There are items like: “Will the person who removed a windbreaker from the Library please return same and receive a punch in the nose?”
But the main interest is the next four sections, “A-to-G,” “H-to-L,” “M-to-T,” and “U-to-Z,” for they are what we use in place of the U.S. Postal “Service” at enormous saving in postage. Everybody inspects his section before class in the morning. If there’s nothing for you, at least you can see who does get mail and sometimes from whom. You’ll look again at lunch time and before going home. A person with a busy social life will check the board six or seven times.
Mine isn’t that busy but I frequently find a note from Cliff. He knows I like to, so he indulges me. It’s fun to get mail on the board.
There was a girl I used to run across because we were both in “H-To-L”—Gabrielle Lamont. I would say hello and she would say hello and there it stopped. Gabrielle was a sad one—not a total termite, but dampish. Her face had the usual features but she let them live their own lives, not even lipstick. She skinned her hair back and her clothes looked as if they had been bought in France. Not Paris—just France. There’s a difference.
Which they probably were. Her father is in Modern Languages and he sent her three years to school in France. It did something. I don’t think she ever had a date.
We both had eight o’clocks and she would check “H-to-L” every morning when I did and then go quietly away. There was never a note for her.
Until this one morning… Georgia Lammers, who is purely carnivorous, took a note off the board as Gabrielle came up. I heard this soft little voice say, “Excuse me. That’s mine.'
Georgia said, “Huh? Don’t be silly!”
Gabrielle looked scared but she put out her hand. “Read the name, please. You’ve made a mistake.”
Georgia snatched the note away. She is a junior and wouldn’t bother to speak to me if Daddy weren’t on the staff—but I’m not afraid of her. “Do it,” I insisted. “Let’s see the name.”
Georgia stuck the envelope in my face and snapped, “Read it yourself, snoopy!”
“Gabrielle Lamont,” I read out loud. “Hand it over, Georgia.”
“What?” she yelped, and looked at it. Her cheeks got very red.
“Hand it over,” I repeated.
“Well!” said Georgia. “Anybody can make a mistake!” She flung the note at Gabrielle and flounced off.
Gabrielle picked it up. “Thanks,” she whispered.
“Usual Yellow Cab Service,” I said. “A pleasure”—which it was. Georgia Lammers is popular in a cheap, plunging-neckline way, but not with me. She acts as if she had invented sex.
Gabrielle started getting mail every day—some in envelopes, some just with a thumbtack shoved through folds. I wondered who it was; but every time I saw Gabrielle she was alone. I decided it must be someone her father did not like so they had to use notes to arrange secret dates. I told Cliff so, but he said I had an uncontrolled romantic imagination.
Gabrielle got eleven notes that week and I got only four, all from Cliff. I pointed this out and he said I did not appreciate my blessings and he was going to ration me to three a week. Men are exasperating.
I came up one morning as Gabriehle was taking down a note; this time Georgia Lammers was there. As Gabrielle left I said sweetly, “Nothing for you, Georgia? Too bad. Or was it Gabrielle’s turn to swipe your note?”
Georgia sniffed and went into the Registrar’s office, where she is a part-time clerk. I thought no more about it until after five, when I was waiting in Old Main for Daddy, intending to ride home with him.
There was nothing on “H-to-L” for me, or for Gabrielle, or Georgia. Nobody was around so I sat down on the Senior Bench and rested my feet.
I jumped when I heard someone behind me, but it was only Gabrielle. She’s a freshman, too, and anyhow she wouldn’t tell. But I didn’t sit down again—our senior committee thinks up fantastic punishments for ignoring their sacred privileges.
A good thing I didn’t—Georgia came out of the office then. But she did not notice me; she went straight to “H-to-L” and unpinned a note. I thought: Maureen, your memory is slipping; there was nothing for her a minute ago.
Georgia turned and saw me. She flushed and said, “What are you staring at?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t think there was a note for you—I just looked at the board.”
She started to flare up, then she put on a catty smile. “Want to read it?”
“Heavens, no!”
“Go ahead!” She shoved it at me. “It’s very interesting.”
Puzzled, I took it. It was a blank sheet, nothing but creases and thumbtack holes. “Somebody is playing jokes on you,” I said.
“Not on me.”
I turned it over. The address read: “Miss Gabrielle Lamont.”
It finally soaked in that the address should have been “Georgia Lammers.” Or should have been for Georgia to touch it. I said, “This note isn’t yours. You have no right to it—”
“What note?”
“This note.”
“I don’t see any note. I see a blank sheet of paper.”
“But—Look, you thought it was a note to Gabrielle. And you took it down anyway.”
Her smile got nastier. “No, I knew it wasn’t a note. That’s the point.”
“Huh?”
She explained and I wanted to scratch her. Poor little Gabrielle had been sending notes to herself, just to get mail when everybody else did—and Georgia had caught on. Both girls had campus jobs which kept them late; Georgia had seen Gabrielle come in late a week earlier, look around, and pin up a note. Being a sneak, she had ducked out to find out to whom Gabrielle was writing—only to find that it was addressed to Gabrielle herself.
Poor Gabby! No wonder I had never seen her with anyone. There wasn’t anyone.
Georgia licked her lips. “Isn’t it a scream? That snip trying to make us think she’s popular? I should write a real note on this—let her know that—her public isn’t fooled.”
“Don’t you dare!”
“Oh, don’t be dull!” She pinned it up, putting the tack back in the same holes. “I’ll let the joke ride until I think of something good.”
I grabbed her arm.
“Don’t you touch her notes again or I’ll—”
She shook me off. “You’ll what? Tell her that you know her notes are phony? I can just see you!”
“I’ll tell the Dean, that’s what! I’ll tell the Dean you’ve been opening Gabrielle’s notes.”
“Oh, yes? You looked at it, too.”
“But you handed it to me!”
“Did I? My word against yours, sweetie pie.”
“B—it—”
“And if you talk, the whole campus will know about Gabrielle’s fake notes. Think it over.” She marched off.
I was so quiet on the way home that Daddy said, “Smatter, Puddin’? Flunk a quiz?”
I assured him that my academic status was satisfactory. “Then why the mourning?”
