D's Imaginary Friend, Bob

D, Ben, and Bob; 20 August 2009

Many years ago, when D first started working in aviation, he would come home from work with these unbelievable tales -- all involving Bob. "You'll never believe what Bob did today!" was a frequent dinnertime conversation starter. Bob is the master of the practical joke, and D's outrageous stories about Bob would often have us laughing so hard we were crying. There was the time that Bob used a syringe to inject a ton of water into the seat cushion of a colleague's desk chair, so that the chair looked dry, but when the poor guy sat down, he was virtually sitting in a puddle. Or the time he moved a guy's car in the office parking lot and then invited the entire department to his window to watch as the guy wandered through the lot confused. Who can forget the time when Bob was on a business trip and stealthily took a colleague's boarding pass out of his briefcase at the airport gate, then boarded the plane himself, leaving the guy to have to plead with the ticket collector to let him onboard with no boarding pass...until Bob casually walked back up the jetway with it in his hand. And there are SO MANY MORE. And D would also come home with "recommendations" from Bob. "Bob says we should install the new hardwood floors ourselves, rather than paying someone to do it." (Really bad idea -- we're not DIY-ers.) There were a lot of "Bob says" bad ideas. Yet for the first year that they worked together, I hadn't met Bob. As the Bob stories got crazier and his ideas more hair-brained, I started calling Bob, "D's imaginary friend". I was hard-pressed to believe that any one guy could truly be responsible for so many stories.
I finally met Bob at a cocktail party -- and discovered that everyone at the party had at least one "Bob story" that they couldn't wait to tell. Yes, he's just that funny. Over the years, we've had a lot of fun with Bob and his saint of a wife, Paula. Some of you might remember Bob as the guy who took over behind the bar at D's 40th birthday party, after the bartender had left for the night, making unique and unusual mixed beverages. (Actually, those of you still there at the time WON'T remember it, since the drinks were lethal!)
Bob has been in town for a few days of meetings with D and Ben, and we all got together for dinner at our place last night. Needless to say, we laughed our way through dinner. Can you tell? (Ben looks pretty good with those rabbit ears, eh?) And we think we got off without any jokes being played on us. But one can't always be sure...time will tell. Did I tell you about the time Bob went to a friend's house for dinner and while there hid the poor guy's large suitcase behind a hot water heater...so well hidden that the guy (after blaming the missing suitcase on his wife, then his kids) went out and bought a brand new one?