BOB SCHMIDT

Bob was a guy who joined me at Washington for my freshman year.

Bob was kind of odd-shaped. I used to refer to him as "Frankenstien." He had a tall, lanky body. But his arms seemed to be a lot longer that they should have been - a bit out of proportion for his body. If not Frankenstein, than surely it was a Scooby Doo villain.

I got to know Bob a little bit during the second semester of my freshman year. We sat next to each other in Mrs. Fischer's language class. Bob was a pretty friendly guy. He had tinted glasses.

Some may recall that in the spring of 1986, our school became infested with a plague of rubber hands. You could buy them at Sentry for about 25 cents. They were stretchy and sticky. You could hold onto one end, while flinging the hand part several feet. If you hit it just right, you could grab someone's paper with it and pull it back to you. Anyway, Bob had one and let me play with it one day. I remember stepping onto the hand part, then pulling on the chord very slowly, bringing it up to my desk. I had that thing pulled as tight as it would go before it probably would have ripped. Then I lifted my foot and held on. That purple hand swung violently in the air, swooped over our table (Bob was on my right) crossed the aisle and slapped onto the table in front of Chip Pelnar. He got startled and jumped in his seat. But he didn't actually see the hand, as it happened so quickly. He started to look around to try and figure out what happened. But by that time, the hand was back in my hand resting safely, while Bob and I giggled.

I'm not sure if I ever had Bob in any classes after that year. I think he was a veteran of the various shop classes. If memory serves, he may have hung around with Mark Schreiber for awhile. But I can't be sure of that.

To my knowledge, I have not seen Bob since high school. Today I believe he lives in Two Rivers. He's living with a woman named Sherri - who I presume to be his wife. But it could be a sister as well. I don't honestly know. Other than that, I have no clue what Bob is doing these days.