Thank You Bob!

I was mildly shocked and surprised yesterday as I was working on one of the monthly letters that I write when I noticed a Facebook update or our request for inclusion to my Facebook group of one of the dads of one of the guys I used to hang with 50 years ago, Robert DeRell.

Robert DeRell was in my ward( religious community submit to a parish). He was a bigger than life personality, I think their seven or eight kids in the family and Robert sold Kirby vacuum cleaners. He always remind me of Ronald Reagan, and he always had an idea about everything. He was always thinking pushing himself and his family to be better than they were. He was a legend in our ward particularly regarding his golden Kirby. Seriously he had a gold-plated Kirby vacuum he won for selling the most vacuums in his area in one year. A gold Kirby is a sight to behold.I don't know I think I was seven or eight when this happened and I knew it wasn't real gold but he had outgunned/sold everybody else that's just kind of guy Robert was.

As I indicated Robert DeRell was the father of one of my best friends growing up. I watched them from the outskirts you had a really interesting relationship with his boys. The actually did stuff together, they genuinely like doing stuff with each other. My friend Greg would actually make fun of his dad good-naturedly and went back and forth they had a good time with each other and I hate to say it that was something I never had. I did not have that relationship with my father. I didn't spend a lot of nights over at their home but some and always enjoyed the feeling that existed at the household. Their house much like ours revolved around their religious affiliations in church work.

My relationship with this family and every other aspect of my life change significantly with my spinal cord injury when I was 15. I don't blame anyone particularly except just the time. People just didn't know what to do with folks with disabilities and the reason I bring this up is that of all the people I knew at the time I think Bob was the first may be only to help me reenter life as someone normal. Please realize this was somewhat weird but still I felt I was getting back into life. It is probably two years after my trauma, I pretty much gone to rehab and was back in the school and I was a normal adolescent with spinal cord injury, in a wheelchair. I needed money, I needed to date I wanted to I want to get back my life but I could not find any way to get money and I hated asking my parents for money. We never had money I always had the feeling everything was hand to mouth. I looked and looked for part-time jobs and full-time jobs during the summer but it just was not to be. Then one day Bob asked if I wanted job and of course I said yes. I should've heard the bills and the alarms go off in my head or paid more attention to them. But I didn't I just wanted cash. Well, the job Bob offered me was setting appointments for vacuum sales presentations… Telemarketing. This is before I had any idea of how effective telemarketing could be. I was defeated I couldn't sell myself I couldn't sell anything else I tried to make those appointments in the back room of Bob's Kirby storefront on Broadway Avenue there in Boise. I left about an hour into the project totally defeated. But in hindsight I'm so thankful that Bob was there and took a chance on me even though I failed he let me fail he gave me the opportunity.

Bob has to be ancient now, I hope he remembers me. I don't know how much I really want to rekindle relationship with Bob since we have gone separate ways in our lives, which means I have diverged from the path he probably would have had me choose in my life. If he wants all communicate with them I owe this guy a lot.