You know how there are times in life you may or may not want to attend a certain event on the calendar, but for whatever reason you kind of have to put in an appearance?

Well, there’s a story out of the community of Pichuclaco, in southern Mexico, that suggests a loophole for those situations.

There was an event in town last week about public health, with several hundred people getting treatment on site.

For an event that size it made sense for the mayor of Pichuclaco, Moisés Aguilar Torres, to attend.

After all, he’d worked as a nurse before taking office.

For whatever reason, the mayor wasn’t on hand, but his office had a plan B in mind.

Instead of having Mayor Torres in person at the event, they brought a cardboard cutout of the mayor.

It’s a life-size cutout in which the mayor is standing with his right fist extended into the air.

And people posed for pictures with the cutout, the way they would’ve posed with the actual, real-life mayor had he been there.

There’s been some pushback, as you might expect, but the mayor’s office pointed to the success of the event, saying, in effect, it’s not like the cardboard cutout’s appearance… fell flat.

But it could’ve been worse for the cutout.

Like the time a New England gas station chain was promoting their iced coffee with some help from none other than David Hasselhoff, of “Knight Rider” and “Baywatch” fame.

They put cardboard cutouts of the Hoff in hundreds of stores. Only people started stealing them. By the hundreds. They’d put up replacements and those would get stolen too!

The company wasn’t thrilled. As for the real live David Hasselhoff? He found the whole thing “really funny.”

Constituents furious as Mexican mayor sends life-sized cardboard cutout of himself to an official event he couldn’t attend (Daily Mail)

‘David Hasselhoff to go, please’: 550 cardboard cutouts stolen (Los Angeles Times)

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