Once Eaten

Some foods you just end up growing out of as a child. It's an unavoidable aspect of life that you cannot escape: one day you love it, the next day you hate it. It's just a Fact of life (ha!). Now I don't mean any genre of food per-se, as in "I loved cereal as a child, now I vomit in my bowl at the mere sight of it.", though I'm sure there are people who do that. No I am referring to specific food types.

A prime example of this would be Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches, or as they're more commonly known in the hood, PB&J sammiches. Almost everybody I have known in my life loved them, they were a staple part of their diet as a child. Then one day something just happened and they stopped being cool. Now as adults they are a reviled part of their diet and they vomit at the mere sight of them.

What is the main driver behind that sudden twist in taste? Could it be hormones? Violence? Wanting to be part of the "In Crowd"? Blossom on weeknights on NBC? If you wanted my guess (which is why you're reading this) it would be something far more complicated, like having it day-in and day-out for the vast majority of your childhood. I'm pretty sure that would have something to do with it, but hey that's just me.

For me, my love/hate relationship with food isn't quite so simple.

My food love/hate thing definitely stems from the child to adult scenario I've established, unfortunately it's not as easy to describe as "I Love Broccoli...I Hate Broccoli". Actually, the more thought I've put into this Fact-Theory hybrid the more complicated it gets for me. Would you like to know more? Of course you would!

In my youthfulness I definitely remember eating Tuna Fish sandwiches, which is funny because I hate seafood in all of it's forms (this will definitely be a future Facts, so be prepared). I can't even remember the last time I ate a tuna fish anything, whether it be a sandwich, casserole or surprise. I'm sure one or two have slipped past me and made its way into my stomach in the days that have gone by, but not because I went out of my to do so.

Tuna is just nasty: it smells funny, it's covered in water and only tastes good when bathed in mayonnaise. Not necessarily the best of combos, making a food delicious by forcing it to swim around in man made fat. Of course when you're eight years old things like that don't really cross your mind. Plus kids eat paste.

But that's where things get conflicting for me with my hate theory. I really can't put my finger on the fact whether or not I really did like Tuna in the first place as a young lad.

Like I said prior, I know I ate the crap when it was put in front of me, but I don't remember actually enjoying the process. I can't bring up any kind of emotional based memories to associate with this food whatsoever. So did I eat this food in my youth out of pleasure, or was it out of sheer obligation?

This in turns brings moral dilemma: how can I go around preaching on and on about foods one loves as a youth, but hates as an adult, and yet be morally confused about the one that I bring up as an example in my own life? Can I use the canned Tuna as an example in my Fact just because I have a memory of eating as a child, but no clear recollection of having any emotional attachment to it whatsoever? I think about this every time I see a can of Starkist or a dolphin doing tricks on television.

I feel the only way to really clear the air on this one is to just buckle down, pull $.75 out of thin air, walk down to the Dolphin Free section of the supermarket, grab a can of Charlie's favorite brand and take the plunge. That's right, take the plunge and get at least one strange pathetic theory out of the way!

If I make a Tuna Sandwich, eat it, and hate it I can stay in my unnecessary moral dilemma that bothers me only once every four years. BUT, if I eat it and like it, then I can develop a reverse theory that I did always hate Tuna, and my tastes have matured and I can write another Fact's of Bob's Life based on my adventure!

But I'm cheap, and I can't stand the smell of that crap.

So it's a Fact: Do I like Tuna? Not really. Did I ever like Tuna? I dunno. Will I ever dive head long into a fresh can of chopped fish to see if I still hate it, or if I have developed new tastes for it? No, that shit stinks.

All By Myself

Just recently I made the mistake of telling one of my original loyal fans/readers/slaves aware that I finally had this wonderful blog up and running. He was so overjoyed with rage and jealousy that he made it be known through the comments section of one of my Facts, that he decided to make his own blog, about his own life, in hopes to inspire me to write more! And so he did.

So I mosied my lazy ass over to my friend's blog to see what the Dealy-O was all about, to see what divine inspiration I could draw from his hate filled words. Instead, all I found was shear horror.

At first sight it appeared like this little blog of his was a mere copy-cat of mine: the title, format, even the goddamn ending was like mine! But that was not was what was upsetting me. Matter of fact I thought it was pretty damn funny. No, it was what was written that truly shook me to the core.

My loyal friend who wrote this blog had been playing with himself for most of his childhood.

I had no idea...I had no words to describe the shock I felt. It was almost paralyzing. It was all right there in front of me in black and white, he just flat out admitted it. To make matters worse, his parents made him do it! And in Public!! Can you imagine that?!

The only thing I could was sit there at my computer and just stare at my screen with a blank face, and just try to process this information, but I couldn't. All I could do was just offer some words of comfort in his comments: "I had no idea you played with yourself so much"

Which is what brings us to today's Fact: I too am tainted of the foul act of playing with thyself. I know, I know, it's hard to hear, but it must be heard. The Facts must be told.

Being a rabid child of the untamed wilderness, whose parents both worked tirelessly to provide simple necessities in life like liquid water, it was practically a common daily act to wander out in the woods and...amuse yourself. Sometimes it would only take an hour, other times it would take all day, but regardless it would have to be done, I would have to be amused.

The acts required to get the job done were endless, and sometimes sickening. They could be anything from the sick act of War (a lone child taking out an entire division of terrorists by himself...horrifying), Construction (giant fortresses hanging from the trees, ala Ewoks), or just silly little Reindeer Games (???). You get the hint though, I played, and played, and played with myself CONSTANTLY. Unfortunately it didn't stop there.

Playing with yourself is like a gateway drug; it gets you high, and gets you by, but only for a little while. Eventually you need to take the next step, you need to push it to the next level, and that next level is friends. You see I couldn't stave off the endless hordes of invisible enemies I established in my War game anymore. I couldn't build my Ewok-like Tree Fort palace in the trees with just my two hands. And Reindeer Games are just no fun with just one Reindeer. You need friends to keep these sick goings on going on.

Unfortunately one is just not enough. You need more, and more, and they need more too, and before you know it you have a network of friends that you don't even know! Eventually you end up getting so addicted to them, and having so many of them, that you end up being a faceless drone in a crowd of thousands and unable to accomplish any kind of playing at all. Then before you know it you find yourself in a dark basement, sitting in a corner, covered in cold sweat, getting those strange cravings to play with yourself all over again. Right back where you started.

it's just a viscous cycle that never ends. It's terrifyingly horrible. Fortunately for my friend it looked like he never reached that point of desperation, and promptly just stayed with himself (his parents gave him toys).

So to all of you out there, who had to play by/with yourselves, I say to you this: I understand, I was there, I too am one of you, and that you are not alone.

So it's a Fact: What started out as a fun way for a minion to get me motivated to write better, funnier Facts, ended up being a solemn cry for help, and a way for me to exorcise my own personal "play with myself" demons. And for that I say thank you.

BONUS FACT: To read the horrifying account of what my Friend/Original Fanboy/Underling actually went through as a child, I will have a benefit link to his first hand account up shortly. I would greatly appreciate it if you would all read it and let him know you understand of how much he truly played with himself as a child. Thank you!

Little Did They Know

Do you remember the heyday of the Nintendo era? The golden days of NES? When everything they advertised seemed like it was pure magic, regardless if it was crap! Things like ROB, the Robot Operated Buddy, who could move spinning discs right by your side. Or the sweat inducing Power Pad, that gave you the false impression that you had the control over an 8-bit Olympic athlete through the power of your feet! Perhaps the most well known, the Power Glove. A fashion accessory that wielded so much useless power no one knew what to do with it...not even it's creators. I of course only had the Power Pad, because it came in a cheap NES bundle pack that my parents could afford.

Ahhh, sweet fond memories.

But that's not what this Facts' about. No, it's about high, lofty expectations being crushed, and then forced to live with those crushed expectations for the rest of your life. And then play with them.

In keeping with the theme that I was poor as shit, my parents would very rarely go out and just buy a video game. No sir, that occasion was usually reserved for something special like Christmas, a Birthday, or if the family pet left us some money in it's will. We all knew this; it was law.

I remember having this naive idea that my parents just knew what the good ones were, that they would magically pick the best videogame of the shelf, the one that would provide only the finest entertainment; mindless hours of callous inducing, thumb numbing bliss! Unfortunately that was not the case.

For them picking videogames was allot like picking out toys. What they would do, when picking toys, is walk down the toy aisle and pick up the one that looked economically feasible yet similar to what you had originally requested. Example: If you asked for a GI Joe, you got a generic 'American Fighter Brigade' figure instead, one that looked like a GI Joe, but was a poor (shit poor) substitute.

By taking the above example into consideration, and the fact that they knew nothing about video games, how do you (the reader) think they picked out video games for us? I'll tell you: By cover art and price.

If the box looked like it might hold our interest for twenty-thirty minute intervals (dragon or spaceship) and it was $24.99 or less, then we were gonna love it...damn it. Sadly they were right.

If it wasn't for the fact that we had rarely gotten videogames, or that when we did get them it was like a holy experience, we probably would have been more picky and whiny when we got a shiny new copy of "Star Soldier" instead of "Mario Bros 3". And this is where the confliction starts to come in.


You see, on these special events (Christmas or Pet Funeral) that we were actually bestowed a slice of 8-bit heaven, you usually made a request on a list of some kind the night prior for what you wanted. So on Christmas eve you left a note for Santa begging him not to give you a shitty game, but one of grace, form and that your friend told you was awesome. It was hard to wake up the next day, unwrap a present that you KNEW was a videogame, and not be disappointed when you saw that it was not a copy of Robocop, but instead was something called Xevious (try and pronounce that).


At the same time the sheer joy and bliss of receiving a brand new game was so rare, that you forgot that you didn't get what you asked for specifically, and your disappointment disappeared. Such is the joy of being an underprivileged youth.

The funny thing is that now, being a retro gamer, and after playing these games again and again (and having no choice), they're really not that bad. Some of them were actually quite good, they were just above my head at the time. I mean you try to teach a 10 year old to appreciate the complexity of a poorly translated Japanese Action/adventure game with RPG elements. Not easy.

I still own all of those games that I received throughout my childhood (I know I said we throughout this, but I never really let my siblings play them), and I still play them from time to time. And time to time I give my parents grief for not buying me, or my siblings, the proper video games to grow up with. They understand my pain, and tell me to shut up.

So it's a Fact: My parents didn't (and don't) know shit about good videogames. But the ones they got me ended up being okay...after ten years.

Color Purple Haze

So before I get too far off on a tangent on newer Facts, I wanted to discuss a little bit more about those purple, nightmarish orbs known as
Huckleberries, and what further horrors that they had wrought on my life. Or to be more accurate what further horrors my parents cast upon me that were associated with said hellberries.

As I mentioned in the previous fact "Child Labor of Love" (already deemed a classic), in my family's futile attempt to fight the constant onslaught of poverty, my mother constructed a small business based off of tourists' lust for the disgustingly popular fruit known as Huckleberries. This small business was primarily built and sustained with my sweat, blood and tears, in an unholy mixture that could only be described as a pain cocktail. The mixture was 4:2:3 for those with the need to know.

This leaves an interesting plot hole/questionable conundrum to the whole situation: Where the eff did all those devilberries come from? They didn't just shit themselves on my mother's lap on a regular basis, ready to be squashed, cooked and sold, did they? Of course not, that's just crazy talk!

Who'd make up some crap like that!

No, my parents force marched us up to the mountains and would not let us come back home until we hand picked enough berries to sustain us for weeks on end.

It didn't start out this way, not initially. At first my parents did all of the picking, and we (siblings and whoever else was unlucky enough to tag along) were allowed to just run around in the the woods and act like little jackasses. We'd do things like play war, wake up bears, throw rocks in the air, it was fantastic. Then one day it all changed.


After realizing that having an additional several pair of small hands helping you pick Huckleberries are better than NOT having several pair of small hands pick huckleberries, my parents were quick to sever the ties to those childish games as quick as possible. No more fun games like 'running into tree as fast as possible', or 'see if this is edible'. Nope, those were all gone. From now on the only fun to be had was seeing how high we could count berries before we passed out from heat exhaustion. My personal favorite was to see how much dust you could consume from the passing vehicles on the dirt roads. I could never quite seem to record my personal best as I always seemed to cough up whatever I inhaled.


I'm not quite sure how many years this went on, seeing as this primarily went on through the summer months and only every few days. And to be fair, my mother did occasionally buy those purple bastard berries from a local fool, but as I pointed out in my previous Fact, child-slave labor is so much more affordable.

So it's a Fact: Free fruit is never truly free.

Child Labor of Love!

One of the many recurring themes that you're going to end up hearing throughout these documented facts of my life is how shit poor I was as a child in the harsh tundra known as Priest Lake, Idaho. My Father worked tirelessly as a Police Officer, my Mother had an endless string of odd jobs as well as ran a day care, and to top it all off my parents both enforced rudimentary child-slave labor on me.

That's right, slave labor. Now I don't mean whiny bitch slave labor, as in "my mom made me do dishes and now I have prune hands" kind of labor, oh no. I mean true blue hard-core slave labor, where it almost qualified to have been sweat shop work. Actually the only thing missing was an hourly wage of five cents. The one thing I have to blame for all of this, aside from my parents and their social standing, is Huckleberries.

For those of you who don't know what the hell a Huckleberry is, it is a berry that grows in the Pacific Northwest region of America, it tastes like a sour blueberry injected with rubbing alcohol, and the mere mention of it gets most tourists absolutely wet with excitement.

My Mother saw the possibility for some capital gain in this cursed fruit, and decided to take a risk by starting a Huckleberry Chocolate business. It would end up staying around for some years and apparently be able to provide for frivolous things for our family like clothes and food.

Do you know how? With my sweat!

That's right, for days on end I was shackled to our kitchen counter, forced to wrap chocolate, after chocolate into purple tin wrappers, slicing my hands to hapless ribbons. Hours of mindless wrapping went by, piles of chocolates mounding up so that they could be put into little wooden boxes to be sold to unsuspecting tourists and afficiondos. But those boxes don't build themselves, do they? After nearly passing out from chocolate fumes it was then time to move on to the next station and create the boxes.

On to the next station I moved, where my delicate little child hands were forced to perform the duties of men. Tiny hands holding tinier nails, pounding constantly to create hideous boxes for disgusting chocolates. And when my hands were trembling with numbness from the hours of hammering it was still not over; the lids had to be made. The evil overlords that were my parents threw shards of wood in my face, along with a hot glue gun, with the only encouraging words being "work". More time passed, and the only way to gauge it was by the amount of blisters I got on my fingertips from the hot glue that poured out of the gun to make the lids for these chocolate coffins.

When that was all through all I could do was pass out on the floor, exhausted from days of work with no rest and the only food to eat being huckleberries, but it was still not over. The only real rest came when one of the two parents strode up and pointed at all of the completed boxes and said "Wrap". From there I had to take cellophane wrapper and an iron and wrap those bastard creations until they were all complete. This is the only point where I got any true rest, I could work half asleep here: ironing plastic in a daze.

After that it's pretty much a haze. I would just wake up in my room all of a sudden, my hands bandaged up, and a bowl of warm water for dinner waiting for me on the floor. There would be a note next to the bowl with a date letting me know how much time had passed while I was working. For years that was how I spent my summer. I really can't complain THAT much though, apparently it's the only way that I got new clothes for the school year, and fresh glue sticks to burn my hands with each week.

I bring these memories up to my parents on a regular basis, always pointing out how horrible it was to spend the vast majority of my summers with my hands covered in slivers and glue blisters. Summers that could have been spent creating happy memories instead, things like dry humping young women on the beach, which probably would have happened so nobody burst my bubble. Instead they always try to say it was never that bad, that I never went through all of those horrible ordeals, and that we had both cold and warm running water. No matter how hard they try they can never deny the child-slave labor that was enforced upon me, since I have my brother and sister to back my story up. My parents forced them to watch me work, yelling at them the whole time telling them that this is what happens when you don't behave. When these facts are forced into their face all they can say is "It paid for your school clothes".

So it's a Fact: Not only was I put through the basics of slavery as a child, but I also paid for my own school clothes.

Pump Me Up!

Back when I was a small wee little lad, shoes meant a whole lot more to me emotionally than they do now. Having the best looking shoes on the planet meant something: it meant that you looked cool, that you didn't get teased, and that you weren't poor (which also got you teased). If you were thinly veiled disguised poor, like my family, you only bought shoes once a year, and on that day you paid very careful attention to what everyone else was wearing. God forbid your feet don't fit in (sorry).

Things were good for many a year, things never strayed outside of this pattern. All I had to do was just look at my friends feet once a year, make my parents buy me a similair pair of discounted shoes on 'Shoe Day', waltz into school and point to my feet and say "look at my sweet ass feet!". Then one year things changed.

A strange pair of shoes crept up over the horizon, ones that some rich kid had (I won't reveal his name for security purposes) and these...noises were coming from them! Once we got closer to see what the hell they were, they ended up being none other than the Pump! I remember the only question we could ask, as we stared at the basketball shaped thumb pumps on each tongue of this kid's Hi Tops was "wazzat?" The Goddam Pump!

Now of course we all needed to have them, and a pair of Pumps cost almost as much money as effing Nintendo! That's alot of dough for a shoe that's supposed to make you a better basketball player, but there's ways around this little conundrum. You see, it costs an unborn child for a REAL pair O' Pumps, not a Generic Pair. So the second I saw a pair of all black, imitation leather, fake pumps at Safeway I had to have them, and I begged my parents for them by pissing myself and crying. They knew how much I had wanted them, and seeing as they were only $14, they went ahead and got them for me. The second I was in the family Horse & Carriage (ie Nissan) I started lacing those bastards up to be pumped.

And Pump I did! I Pumped those stupid things all weekend, I forced my brother and sister to Pump them, I would hop up and down my yard to see if the Pumping action would increase my length. I would just lay on the ground with my eyes closed, bathing in the sunlight, Pumping once every five minutes. Bliss.

When I got to school the next Monday I was amped, I was going to show off my Bargain Bin Pumps and waggle them in everyone elses face. I remember that when I got on the school bus everyone else had those damn pumps too (who didn't have the expensive ones already), and everyone was reaching inbetween seats Pumping each others shoes, like some kind of sick masturbatory scene! I didn't care though, because I got the cool shoes just like everyone else, and back in grade school I wasn't going to be left out.

So it's a Fact: I went through many-a-pumps in my childhood, and man pumping those things up didn't do a damn thing to your feet but piss em' off.

Frozen Glory!

For those of you who happen to be lucky enough to live anywhere near me you may have noticed that this winter was a prime example of God literally shitting on mankind. One minute there was nothing on the ground, the next over two feet of unholy snow. Some would like to call this a 'Winter Wonderland'. I call it frozen hell on Earth.

As far as the eye could see there was nothing but a plateau of white. Houses were nothing more than mounds of powdered sugar, the streets could no longer be seen and to top it all off, icicles of death hung about everywhere. Yes, frozen hell indeed.

When the city workers finally got around to actually plowing the streets they ended up creating giant snow berms that would block your driveway so you couldn't leave your house. I'd post a picture of these fantastic mounds of snow, but just as quickly as it came it all vanished. Gallons upon gallons of rain recently poured down upon us and it has almost all disappeared in a glorious example of God literally pissing on mankind. Anyways, back to the point.

Immediately I ran outside to start the painful process of shoveling snow. After I got done jumping up and down like an idiot in my driveway, and swearing at the sky for all the snow that was dumping down on me, I stopped for a moment and stared at all of the snow that surrounded me in it's ominous gloom. And in this gloom I got this strange feeling: Childhood Reminiscence!

When I was a young Bob and braved the wild untamed wilderness that was known as Priest Lake, Winter was always like this. Matter of fact it was worse than this. The snow was deeper, the temperature was colder, but my family and I would always make the best of it and adapt. With our mountain man like knowledge we would use the snow to our advantage, like using the icicles from the roof to hunt wild game, or create 'snow presents' for Christmas.

For me though winter didn't mean it was time to play survival games, and avoid the temptation to eat your family members to live another day. No it meant something completely different.

The second any snow hit the ground I got all suited up in my snow gear (pants, boots, gloves, hunting rifle for any yeti) and dove outside to start creating. Create what you may ask? Forts! That's right, Snow Forts! Now I know what you might be saying to yourself: "Wow Bob, only over 1/3 of America's children have done that in their lifetime, I couldn't really give a lesser shit!" and you'd be right, but just bare with me.
I just didn't make forts, I made Forts! Forts that were so massive and massively complex that they boggled the mind just looking at them. Taller than I could ever hope to be, complete with tunnels, defenses for intruders, and a ready supply of weapons for those 'just in case' scenarios. And do you know what the basis for these Forts were? You guessed it, those damn giant snow berms that the snow plows make in front of your driveway. So you can only imagine how long these Forts stretched out too.

God forbid if I had a few friends over to help make a Fort, then it was not just a fort but a monstrosity. An ungodly monstrosity that nobody dare enter but those who were baptised and blessed to enter from the beginning. Making these did come at a price though: Time. It took hours and hours of time in the freezing cold to complete a true, dignified Snow Fort. God only knows how I never got frostbite or picked up by a wandering yeti, mistaken for its young.

Dozens of the damn things were made over the winter months, and I mean literally dozens of them! Like a beautiful frozen empire stretched out over our lawn, and all of it mine (no siblings allowed)! Because these forts weren't just limited to the Berms, nope, I'd roll up giant ass snow balls and make Forts out of those bastards too. It was never enough.

Sadly though all good things must come to an end. As the winter months faded, so did too my wonderful creations. They disappeared slowly before my eyes day by day as the temperature rose. All I could do was stare out the window and get distracted by something else.

This whole horrid winter experience, and coincidentally this Fact, made me look back upon my crazy Fort creating days as a child with a particular fondness yet sadness. As I walked around to wherever it was that I was going and passed one of those giant ass berms of snow on the side of the road it brought up those memories of playing in the snow for hours on end like an idiot. I just wanted to dive in and start making something, ANYTHING, as long as it resembled something like a Snow Fort. Unfortunately I constantly played the role of the responsible adult and never jumped in the snow like a babbling fool. Besides I didn't have any snow pants.

So it's a Fact: If I could have found a way to keep everything from melting as child, you could be bowing down in front of me in my frozen palace of terror which lay in the center of my ever expanding Ice Empire!

Welcome to the Facts!

Well I never thought I would finally get this thing on the web, but it is finally here:

The Facts of Bob's Life website has been born! In Blog form!

It has taken my lazy ass well over two years of planning, organizing, designing and debating, and I decided to just get off my high horse and put the "Facts" out in any way, shape or form.

But wait, asks the uninitiated, what are the Facts of Bob's Life exactly?

Well, says Bob the gentle guide, they are a series of humorous tales (or "Facts" if you will) that chronicle my life in the past, present and quite foreseeable future. The subjects can range anywhere from tortured 80's childhood nostalgia, highbrow political nonsense, bathroom incidents to twisted silverware. All of which are true. So if you're offended by any of this I encourage you to read the rest of the post to make sure if you are or not and then for God's sake stop reading it if you are.

So how did all of this madcappery start?

It all began one day at my work. I was bored out of my mind and I needed a distraction, so I decided to start a project. I had decided that I would send an e-mail to a friend of mine once a day, every day, with the soul purpose of annoying him to the point of madness, or to the point of him walking over to me and hitting me in the back of the head. Each e-mail would contain nothing more than a pointless little tidbit about my life. Something along the lines of "when I was a child I loved PBJ sandwiches, now I don't". Simple, effective, maddening.

Unfortunately this plan did NOT work, and instead my friend loved it. He loved it so much he told others about it and they wanted these e-mails. And then they told their friends, and their friends told their friends, and I bragged about myself and blah blah blah, and it blossomed into this strange daily newsletter that we all loved. I even held a contest with crazy prizes (cat food with q-tips in a ziplock bag. no joke)!

It stopped because of a stupid thing called life, which somehow always gets in the way, and I also wanted to make a website out of the thing. Well life kept getting in the way, and as I mentioned above, after two years of empty promises and failed attempts, there was nothing.

So I gave up and just made a stupid blog type thing. And I hate blogs.

To justify it to myself I see this as a sort of dry-run for the actual website that will someday manifest itself when I wake up one morning.

So it's a Fact: At least this is something, right? Right!