Who is the Bob/Bobby/Robert in YOUR life?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Even if you don’t know them that well.
I’d guess that most everyone knows at least one Robert; Or Bob or Bobby as they may be known as.

Who is yours and what are they like? And, no, it can’t be yourself! :stuck_out_tongue:

My Bobby is my uncle, and he’s always been my favorite uncle. From the time I was born he’d pick me up and throw me up in the air only to catch me again. Even now, when he can no longer pick me up (and boy wouldn’t it be nice to see him try?), he’s still one of the kindest men I’ve ever known. He’s always joyful and jolly. You can always find a smile on his face.
Not all Bobbys can be like mine. Some may be your enemy or rival. Or maybe you have a kind Bob in your life.

Tell me about a Robert you know. Tell me a story, share a tale, describe how they are. Even if you only know their NAME (like if they’re your refridgerator repairman), at least tell me…

…who is YOUR Robert?

2

Robert is my maternal grandfather. My grandmother calls him Bob, but he doesn’t strike me as being a Bob. I’ll have to spend some time thinking of a story, but he’s going on 85 and of a curmudgeonly disposition - not outright mean - and a good handyman.

3

“My” Rob was one of my mother’s greatest friends. He was hemophiliac, contracted HIV in the mid-to-late eighties from a transfusion, and died in the early nineties. One of my younger brothers was given Robert as a middle name in remembrance of the friend.

4

I have an uncle Bob. He, too, is a very kind man. Also very, very large and exuberant. I saw him for the first time in years at my Dad’s wedding and he hugged me so tightly, he broke 2 of my ribs.

My husband’s cousin has a son named Robert. he’s somewhere around 7 years old, and they never shorten the name at all—no Bob or Bobby or Rob or Robbie. He’s Robert.

5

I, too, have an Uncle Bob, but I haven’t seen him since my grandfather’s funeral in ‘96, nor has my mother. For some reason, he decided my mother was mishandling their father’s estate, and even though she offered to let him see all the accounts (she cares for their youngest, mentally disabled sister, and that’s what the estate is for) he refused. He missed my parents’ 50th anniversary and he missed my dad’s funeral a few months later. I’m guessing he screens his calls, because he won’t even talk to my sister. And the kicker is, he’s not poor. He’s a retired longshoreman, he sold a chunk of property to BWI Airport for a tidy profit, he’s single, and he used to be one of my favorite uncles. Now I’m just confused and hurt for my mother.

My FIL is also a Bob. Actually, his birth certificate says “Bobbie” but he uses Bob. I still shake my head at his mother (symbolically - she’s long gone) for not thinking how a grown man would deal with a cutesy name. A 75-y/o man should not be named Bobbie - it’s so wrong. But he’s a good guy, if intimidated by computers, and one of the gentlest human beings I’ve ever met. If he’s a long-lived as his mom, we’ll still have him for 20 more years.

The third is my nephew Robert. My husband’s brother and his wife adopted Robert from a Russian orphanage. He arrived in the states just before his 6th birthday, knowing no English and obviously unaccustomed to affection. When he first met all of us, once he got over the initial shyness, he was all hugs and touching and smiling. He yammered on and on in a language that no one understood, and it was apparent to me that he was a very, very smart little boy. He’s now 11, and smart as can be. He’s way smarter than my BIL. Come to think of it, I need to talk to my husband and find out if they have a college fund for the lad.

My daughter’s second bf was Robbie. He was a very nice boy, but he did have some issues. When he started talking marriage (she was only 16 and he was about to graduate from high school) my daughter freaked out and broke up with him. He took it very badly indeed. It took him almost 2 years to get over it. We saw him at her graduation (his sister was in the same class) and he seemed almost like his old self. I wish him well - he was a good kid.

I never dated a Bob, but I’ve worked with a bunch. None were particularly interesting, so I’ll just wrap this up here.

6

I had a childhood friend named Robert (we lost touch 30 years ago) and a cousin Bob (we lost touch 23 years ago), and now I work with a Bobby, who calls himself that on the air, as opposed to shortening or formalizing his name. Currently, he’s the only one I know.

7

Oh darn, after I hit submit, I remembered that I also have a cousin Robbie. I’ve seen him twice since he was a kid, so we are basically strangers.

8

Robert is my little brother. I usually call him Rob, but I don’t think anyone else does. My parents call him Robban (a Swedish nickname for Robert) or Robert. I think that his friends call him Robert. Sometimes I call him Javierto just because I am his big brother and am therefore allowed to call him crazy names that make no sense. Our dentist in the US used to call him Bob - he didn’t like this at all.

I do know a few other Rob’s as well, but noone who goes by Robert. I don’t even relate the name Bob to the name Robert in any way - to me they are two totally different names.

9

I’m gonna limit it to the Bobs in my email address book:

Bob G, a guy I dated for a while, dumped in a moment of total stupidity, and am still very good friends with, despite his unwillingness to resume a dating thing with me.

Bob S, who was the first person in the recovering community I met when I moved to Oshkosh with about 9 months sober. Now married and with a couple of kids in Ohio somewhere. Our contact is sporadic at best.

Bob U, old boyfriend, who moved to L.A. last fall (and who I haven’t heard from in a couple of months – I should drop him a line). Very nice guy – killer pheronomes – every time I saw him, I wanted to snuggle up to him like a cat, but his looks were actually pretty average.

Bob W, the ex-husband of a woman who went to the same (addiction) treatment center I did. She and I had growth group (group therapy) the same night, down in Des Moines (half an hour from where we all lived), and I rode down with them and their two kids because I didn’t have a car at that point. The ex-wife and I have totally lost touch, but Bob and I are still in regular contact 20 years later.

Interestingly enough, I can’t think of a single Bob or Robert in my (very limited) extended family.

10

My Bob is my ex-husband. When we met, he was sweet, earnest, polite to a fault, romantic, insecure about his height (5’3") and his looks (red hair, freckles…yes, he resembled Howdy Doody, but in a good way!) and desperate for a normal family life. His dad had died when he was young, and he adored my dad…who died a year after we married.

Bob turned out to be an alcoholic, incapable of fidelity, with such huge inferiority problems. He loved that I was smarter than him, school-wise…and hated me for it too. He desperately wanted a family, but having kids made him feel trapped, and he has no relationship with his daughter, and a strained one with his son. He found his ideal woman (barstools, karaoke, mean and nasty) left his family for her, and then she dumped him, toyed with him and completely broke his spirit. He battles unemployment, alcohol, and homelessness, though now he’s working and living with a lesbian alcoholic, and occasionally comes by to ask me to take him back.

A peach of a guy.

11

I have a son named Robert. I haven’t seen him in 8 years, I loaned him some money and he thought it would be easier to disappear than pay me back.

12

I had an Uncle Bob that I loved dearly. After my Father left, he was basically my father figure. We lost him in 96 :(.

I dated a Robert in High School. We broke up but stayed friends until Graduation, after which we lost touch.

I married a Robert (the second), therefore my Father In Law is also a Robert. FIL goes by Bob, my husband is Robby.

13

Bobby was my best friend in pre-school, all the way up to the time we moved.

Bobby was also a fireman that came into the restaraunt I used to wait tables at quite a bit.

14

Oddly enough, I don’t have one and never have. I don’t even remember having a student named a variation of Robert.

Now I want one. Thanks a lot.

15

Hmm…

There was a guy I went to school with once… everyone called him Rubber. “Hey, Rubber!” we’d say. He lived with his grandmother. Then he went to juvy for something. I didn’t know him very well.
Oh shit! Wait! My English teacher! I loved him! Well, we hated each other at first, but then we discovered we shared a mutual love: words. I took his writing class twice, just because I liked it so much. I didn’t get credit for it the second time around, but I didn’t care. I learned more from him and our occasional battles than from any other teacher. Even if I was in another class during a different semester, I would pop my head into his office with my dictionary and we’d sit down and compare/learn new words.

Before we knew each other better, I had taken one of his early English classes, and we loathed each other. I once said “Hi, Bob!” to him at the prompting of an old friend, and he glared at me and said, “Only my friends call me Bob.” I glared right back and he took my photo for the yearbook. Lousy git. However, by the time I was finishing up my final semester, ready to graduate, he took me out into the hallway, we discussed a few more words, he signed my yearbook, put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Call me Bob.” I nearly cried.

So, yes, I guess I do have a Bob. I miss him very much.

16

My sweet Corgi/Sheltie mix is Bobby - Bobby Ranger, to be exact. We also call him Bob or Robert and my husband will pretend to be, I dunno, Will Rogers or someone and tell stories about him that refer to him as “Crazy Ooooole Bob Ranger, as he was known in these here parts”.

The guy who introduced my husband and me was Rob.

17

i don’t want to talk about any of them …

18

Bob - semi brother, not really a part of my life anymore.

Bob Jr. - Nephew, see above.

Bobby - friend

19

Robert was my baby brother. I was six years old when he was born, and he idolized me. Of course, this meant that he spent most of his childhood and adolescence alternating between being a sweet kid and being a total jerk toward me. Robert never got along very well in school, and for a while it was thought that he was either mentally retarded or autistic. He was neither. He was just Robert. He ended up getting a bachelor’s degree in physics at the age of seventeen. He dropped out of two graduate assistanceships and accepted a very lucrative job with Schlumberger. Although he did fine on the job, he had a problem when he was expected to entertain clients: he wasn’t old enough to buy alcoholic beverages, and couldn’t even enter establishments where such beverages were served.

Robert never married. He had several girlfriends, but they all left eventually, since Robert didn’t have a clue how to treat a woman. I tried to talk to him about his ineptness with women, but he just shrugged it off. If ever a man had “lifelong bachelor” engraved on his soul, that man was Robert.

Robert introduced me to the man who later became my husband. My hubby was, for many years, Robert’s best friend (maybe Robert’s only friend). When Robert learned that his best sister and his best friend were planning to get married, he was mightily annoyed, but he got over it. Robert was the photographer at our wedding. The pictures were pretty awful, but we loved them, since we loved Robert.

Robert died on April Fool’s Day, April 1, 1989. His immune system killed him, as mine is now killing me. I miss him very much. I hope to see him again.

*I will see you in the light of a thousand suns.
I will hear you in the sound of the waves.
I will know you when I come, as we all will come,
Through the doors beyond the grave.

…Beth Neilsen Chapman, “Sand & Water”*

20

I misspelled the name of Beth Nielsen Chapman in my post above. :smack: