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.

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 [↩]