Ask Bob

Mitzi writes:

Who do you think you are, posting your opinions about things that you obviously know nothing about!  What gives you the right?

My Dear Mitzi:

First of all, thanks for writing to me!  I haven’t kept track, but I think its been about 8 years since someone has submitted a question.  Which is a bit surprising, because I always felt that the name, “Ask Bob” encouraged folks to write in.

It’s taken about 14 years for me to think about it, but maybe my title isn’t as obvious as I originally thought.  Maybe I’ll change the name to “Ask Bob a question and send it by email, to Bob.  I will answer your question in a way that makes no sense what-so-ever; however it will be answered.”

Or maybe I should start putting my email address on my page.

Anyway, to your question!

My uninhibited desire to say and do whatever I want is attributed to my dear Grand-ma.

Everyone in my family was always in trouble with Grand-ma.  She always called misbehaving, “Being Silly.”  If she heard too much noise, she would come in and yell, “All right, who’s being silllllly.”  She didn’t say it in a nice way.  It was her way of saying, “All right, who’s the ass-hole causing all the trouble!”

Her native language was Spanish and she learned English the old fashioned way, by listening.  Once at breakfast, she was teaching me translations from Spanish to English, “Now pay attention, en Englese ‘MILK’, in Espanol, ‘LA LECHE.’”  Then she picked up a box of cereal, “En Englese, ‘CORN FLAKES’, en Espanol, ‘POST TOASTIES.’”

So there we were, everyone in the family always being accused of “Being Silly.”   Anything anyone touched became garbage, because we were the children of our father, who according to grandma was a “dirty-bum.”

Well, that applied to everyone except me.  I was the favorite.

According to my Mom, I was a splitting image of my Grandpa, who passed away long before I was born.  Miraculously, the “Dirty-Bum” gene skipped over me, which made me better than everyone else.  That meant anything I touched was made of gold and whatever I said were "words of wisdom."  I still believe this because like all grandchildren, you should respect your elders.  As a result, I don’t feel inhibited to share my words of wisdom, because according to grandma (the highest authority), “the lessers” can benefit from my insight.

So in a nutshell, I blame it all on my childhood.

Just like one of those old black and white movies where James Cagney says he became a big mob boss because when he was seven years old he ate a Cherry Jolly Rancher, thinking it was cinnamon.  Which of course led him to a life of crime, which led him to become a mob boss, which lead him to the electric chair.  Which ended the movie.

At least that’s the way I remember it.

Well the same thing happened to me!  Only I I ate a lime Jolly Rancher, thinking it was green apple.  This happened in San Jose, where Grand-ma lived.  One thing led to another and I ended up a world renown blogger who doesn’t get paid.

Litte did we know, just hours from San Jose, and right around the same time that I ate that stupid Jolly Rancher, the Apple Computer was being perfected. The Apple computer probably would have been abandoned if the creators had jobs, but lucky for us, "trickle down economics" was working its magic and everybody was jobless and broke.  That also meant they had plenty of time on their hands to do silly, worthless things like building a computer.

Later, Apple made Computers popular, which was taken advantage of by Microsoft, which rode this popularity all the way to the bank with the Personal Computer.  If you don’t know the difference between a Computer and a Personal Computer or PC, pat yourself on the back, because you’re normal.

Eventually the price of PC’s went down, and Joe-Schmo’s like myself could afford one.   With a new personal computer on-hand in 1999, not only did I party like it was…well 1999, I also created TheWeirdcrap.com.  Unfortunately, sometimes the partying and creating happened at the same time and the original site looked like something a drunk person would make, because…it… was.

Lucky for us, when we started TheWeirdcrap.com the Internet community was thriving and we were able to set up the site at Angelfire.com for free. Which was fortunate, because at the time my wife and I were broke.  At that time, we had internet from “NetZero” which was free dial up, because we couldn’t afford the $15 a month for a paid service.  In retrospect, I realize we probably wouldn’t have been AS broke if we didn’t spend all our money on beer, but we did.

Meanwhile, back in California a fat man painted his belly blue and did a naked dance in the lobby of a "Pizza Shack." To this day, nobody knows why.

My wife and I enjoyed living in Tallahassee, but we missed Omaha, NE where we live now. Did I mention we lived in Omaha before we moved to Tallahassee?  Well we did. Two years after our honeymoon we moved to sunny Florida.

On our honeymoon we had a stop-over in San Jose, where we spent our first night together as man and wife, just like the preacher said.  Actually we wurn't married by a preacher, we were married by a Unitarian High-Priestess who wore lovely flowing robes. But the result was pretty much the same, we were hitched.

So we had our special night in San Jose.  But being as cheap as I was broke, we got a $25 motel, which meant that after a few hours they kicked us out, because they rented by the hour.  I didn't have much cash, so at 3:30 in the morning, we showed up at my Grand-ma’s house, who proceeded to study my wife for signs of silliness, and made homemade french toast while convincing the ol’ lady that she had just married the greatest human to ever walk the face of the Earth.

Actually, now that I think about it, telling you about the start of TheWeirdcrap.com and my wedding day served no purpose what-so-ever; however, it did take us back to my Grand-ma and her campaign against sillyness and that damn Jolly Rancher.  All that led to my present behavior.


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