Thumbnail: Me and Rob laughing

Rob and Chris took off their coats. Not that it was par­tic­u­larly hot, but the Prince Charlie jacket doesn’t allow much flex­i­bil­ity of move­ment when work­ing uten­sils at a table.

I tugged on mine, but the but­tons on my vest held me back. I had the youth size, you see, a word I like to use more than “children’s”, where the vest is an illu­sion cre­ated by sewing two pan­els to the jacket. I would have been naked had I had taken off my coat as the vest is a mod­ern cuirass, offer­ing a form of psy­cho­log­i­cal pro­tec­tion, and I was left with the option of all or nothing.

I made a com­ment about it in pass­ing, and Rob started to unbut­ton his vest, then adamantly told Chris to take his off. I had to con­vince them that I was jok­ing before they stopped.

This has come to define Rob to me. A guy who’s will­ing to embar­rass him­self so that oth­ers will feel more com­fort­able. It reminded me of Adam Sandler in Billy Madison, pre­tend­ing that he peed his pants by splash­ing water on his crotch so Ernie didn’t feel so bad about doing it him­self. Sometimes Rob goes out of his way to help you and ends up embar­rass­ing you even more, but his inten­tions make it easy to for­give him. His heart is in the right place, and that’s more than you can say for most peo­ple nowadays.

Beneath his tough-guy, rough-edged per­sona is the teddy bear.

It’s the same way with his intel­li­gence. He wraps his thoughts in humour, per­haps as a way of hid­ing his per­spicu­ity to put oth­ers at ease1. Unfortunately, some peo­ple can’t see beneath this veneer and mis­in­ter­pret it as typ­i­cal male obnox­ious­ness. It didn’t fool Pat though, who described him as diverse, a per­son with some­thing insight­ful to say about any sub­ject. It was only after Pat used that word that I real­ized Rob is a cos­mopoli­tan who feels at home any­where doing anything.

Rob is also one of the few peo­ple who can tease me and get away with it, because he’s just as self-deprecating. I’ll make fun of his size, and he’ll make fun of mine. And while he’s a man’s man, he has no prob­lem admit­ting that he has he vis­its craft stores for his daugh­ter, that he watches cook­ing shows with his wife, and that he loves his brothers.

That’s the great thing about Rob. He’s filled with con­fi­dence and he has no prob­lem speak­ing his mind, instead of pussy-footing around sen­si­tive sub­jects2. He’s the gen­uine arti­cle. What you see is what you get, and if you have a prob­lem with him, it’s your fault, not his.

That’s Rob.

  1. I think many are intim­i­dated by some­one who can ana­lyze things [↑]
  2. I hate it when some­one doesn’t speak up because they’re scared that some­one may not like their opin­ion [↑]