The Story of "Notbob"

The origins of "Notbob" are shrouded in the misty and strange times of my years at the Eagle Rock Jr. High School Highly Gifted Magnet Program. In ninth grade, our mighty science teacher Wesley "The Wedge" Johnson told us to go off and do science projects...pretty much total freedom to do what interested us.

My friend Nick and I came up with the idea to build a planet. But since we couldn't do that, we decided to build the model of a planet. We obtained some of the necessary parts and came up with some weird enough ideas to have some fun with this. Before we made the model, though, we wrote a travel brochure to extol the planet Floobia's "Less Than a Thousand Wonders". In this brochure were all of the very strange ideas we had come up with, that would eventually make their way onto the model.

The crust of our planetary model was made up of two hollow half-spheres of styrofoam, mainly because this was cheaper than a full solid sphere. Since these pieces were not crafted to go together perfectly, we were left with a ridge where the two halves didn't quite meet running all the way around the "planet".

Rather than let that slide, we incorporated this into the brochure. We called the error "The Circumglobal Ridge" and explained that no-one had ever hiked to the end of it, although one old man had been trying since he was twelve. The natives called him "Bob", which, from the native Floobese translates into "really stupid".

As time would go by, I began to look at this Bob to symbolize single-minded stupidity, narrow thinking, closed-mindedness, the refusal to look around oneself to discover what's actually going on, but instead concentrating only on one precious idea that may turn out to be false. In other words, all the things I tried not to be.

It was even before I entered the on-line arena of local BBS's that I started using the name "Notbob" in such things as computer games and other appropriate circumstances. It was when I did enter my age electronic communications that the nickname "Notbob" actually began to become important. I used it to remind myself that no matter what I came into contact with, to always keep an open mind. I certainly don't know everything, and never will. The only way I can learn anything is to always remain open to new ideas, thoughts, suggestions, experiences, and opinions. Being Notbob reminds me to work to accomplish that, and even though I'm not perfect at it, I try my best.