YAY!

[A HERETIC I AM]

That’s the last one

That’s the last I’ll ever type that word in the lounge.

It’s been 2 and a half weeks since he left us.

For those of you that were dedicated followers of our friend Bob - SalmonChantedEvening’s weekly posts, you’ll know that I very often wrote that single one word response and very, very few times did I ever add anything else.

In a private chat, I explained to Bob where that came from and what it meant to me. The origin is actually rather obscure, it’s from a cartoon from the 60s, probably from the Bullwinkle series or maybe Underdog or something like that wherein there’s a car race going on and they show the crowd of maybe 40 or 50 people in a grandstand. And as the hero goes by, the crowd lets out a collective “YAY!”

But it’s not an enthusiastic YAY, but rather a dead pan, monotonal word. It is as if they have gotten completely bored with the race and their expression is as if to say. “ oh look, here comes the same guy at the front again! Ho hum”.

I explained to him that the sentiment wasn’t that I was bored with what he put up every Sunday but rather it’s the YAY of predictable expectations and excellence.

And since he had such a wonderful sense of humor, he thought that was funny as fuck, so much so that he even used that on my birthday. Instead of saying, happy birthday Paul, he would just simply type YAY! On my Facebook page. Because that’s the kind of guy he was.

I said yay to my friend Bob, every Sunday or as many as I could, because he did produce such predictable excellence.

I don’t know how many of you have ever put up a thread with a dozen or more photographs, but it’s tedious work and it takes dedication to make sure that he never repeated himself which I never caught him doing.

He amused us all, and he brought us beauty and joy for years

And he was my friend

And even though I never met him

Now he’s gone

And I will miss him

Let the universe take your essence back, old man. May your stardust become a new star one day.

Rest in peace, Bob