Blogs

By Bob Eckstein

My Abridged Memoir
By Bob Eckstein

Foreword
Both my editor, and my therapist, agreed that my life story was not interesting enough to include in full and best kept as short as possible.

The Call
My friend, Ally, called me frantically from Hungary, lost while looking for the renowned Anthony’s Book Emporium. I told her, “Calm down. First off, you mean the Anthony Frost English Bookshop. Secondly, it’s in Bucharest, not Budapest. So, you’re in the wrong country. You need to go to Romania.” Ally finally made it there and learned the bookstore had closed back in 2022.

Hamster Ate My Homework
A Kentucky mom is furious with her daughter’s kindergarten teacher for giving her 5-year-old, 10 pages of homework. My first year in kindergarten was me basically just running around.

Living a Lie
I was left back twice in the fifth grade. My parents told me it was because there were not enough chairs in the middle school. In my defense, English is not my first language. I grew up in the South Bronx — I don’t have a first language.

The Rookie
I befriended a young man next to me on a Greyhound bus. When he first sat down, his small bag made a loud thump. I asked him why it was so heavy. He was on his way to Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, to play minor league baseball. He said the bag contained the only two things he needed — a pair of dumbbells. I asked him where was his mitt and he hit his forehead.

The Sly Fox
I had one move with the ladies; “I can’t drive at night.” This works with friends asking for help, too.

The Big Break
I always believed in challenging myself, so I choose the most difficult profession based on what I heard from my family and my school guidance counselor. After being rejected by blacksmith school, I was left with the choice of either being a poet or go into cartooning.

The New World
I read that AI will eventually have the capability of translating a dog’s barks into words. Now I’m worried to learn what Indiana Bones really thinks of me.

For the Love of God
I met my wife in church. It’s not that I’m religious — I went to church to meet women and I haven’t been back since we got married at City Hall.

On the Rocks
We stopped seeing our couples therapist when she told us she thought going on a swingers cruise was a good idea and because she wore a scary amount of beads. As it is, we’re not cruise people. My family is. I asked my mom about adult cruises because she just came back from Bermuda. “Your sister and I had a great time and met a lot of nice people. Just make sure you get the ‘More at Sea’ package.”

The Price of Friendship
I lost a bundle investing in my friend’s business, Doug’s Capers, because he was late to the capers boom. He, meanwhile, moved on to bigger, better things.

Bad in Bed, Worse in Restaurants
I would learn later from cruel, secondhand accounts, why I was so unlucky in love — turns out I’m a loud eater. We can only imagine how many women I could have bedded if just I chewed my food more like a human.

The Later Years
I really don’t know who Blake Lively is.

Epilogue
It has taken me 30 years to get this off my chest; Becky, I never read your diary. Yes, I found it, and I admitted that to you then. But I had no idea it was a diary until after seeing the first sentence and then I stopped. So, Becky, if you are reading this, I hope we are now good.

-END-

— Bob Eckstein

Bob Eckstein is a cartoonist, writer, illustrator and humorist who serves as artist-in-residence for the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop. He is best known for his work in The New Yorker and his books, Footnotes from the World's Greatest Bookstores, The History of the Snowman and Footnotes from the World's Most Fascinating Museums. The latter is an illustrated exploration of 75 museums across North America, combining art, history and humor to create a family-friendly travel guide inspired by the challenges museums faced during the COVID-19 pandemic.