Bob

OK, you might have had to be there for this one, but I’m going to tell the story as best I can:

Hubby and I were in Best Buy to purchase assorted electronic gadgets that we simply couldn’t live without and still be cool when we passed a rack of Christmas CDs. Y’know, James Taylor, Bing Crosby, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Christmas CDs.

And right at eye level was a Christmas CD by Bob Marley.

I stopped dead. Bob Marley?

What blasphemy is this?

My first purchases, at the age of 12-13 when I started babysitting, was Bob Marley’s entire repetoire. $2 an hour X 4 babysitting hours for Andrew and Alexis down the block = 1 Bob Marley album. My brother and I split up TV time in the living room, where both the TV and stereo were. I used all my TV time to crank up Bob Marley and dance around our living room with the cat as my audience and a stick of wood as a microphone with my head thrown down to my knees and back up until my brother told me to just take the stereo into my room. He couldn’t take it anymore.

I thought Bob’s wife Rita was the most beautiful woman on the planet. At 13 I became a Rastafarian and grew dreadlocks (yes, it takes a long time for white people to grow dreadlocks but with perseverance, white people too can have dreadlocks!). I read biographies of Bob Marley like some people read biographies of Winston Churchill: to better understand the modern world through greater knowledge and contemplation of the great figures of the 20th century. Did you know that Bob Marley had 13 children: three with his wife Rita, two adopted from Rita’s previous relationships, and the remaining eight with separate women including one with Miss World 1976 and another with, if teenage memory serves, a table tennis champion? Did you know that one of his sons, Rohan, married Lauryn Hill? And so Churchill carried one of the world’s most formidable nations through WWII. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

I memorialized Bob’s death day for several years. Every May I still think, Bob died in this month. At 15 I wrote a passionate story about a group of teenagers (who included me had I been just a little bit older) who were 15-16 in 1981 when Bob died who somehow managed to get the money for plane tickets and went to the funeral in Jamaica. I had posters of Bob plastered all over my teenage bedroom (of course). Bob Marley has become such a fixture in our family that we refer to him simply as “Bob.” Bob and Cat Stevens are the only two singers that we all agree on, all the time.

And Bob Marley never created a g.d. Christmas album. He never recorded a single version of “Jingle Bells.” He never performed “Auld Lange Syne.” Ever. He never smiled in a silly Santa hat for an album jacket. Not once. Not under the influence of the best dope Jamaica could grow. BOB MARLEY DID NOT RECORD A CHRISTMAS ALBUM.

OK, so you know how this story ends. Somebody stuck a Bob Marley CD on the Christmas CD shelf.

(OK, OK, I did a Google and an iTunes search for Bob Marley and Christmas and it turns out he did record “White Christmas.” This does not constitute an entirely themed Christmas album or a silly Santa hat. Besides, can you hear how HIGH he is in that song? I bet he doesn’t even remember recording it. Besides, it kind of negates this entire blog entry and I like this blog entry so we’re gonna just kinda ignore the inconvenient truth of “White Christmas.”)

I invite you to take a moment to consider that you, too, (if you were born before May 11, 1981) walked the earth at the same time as Bob. I invite you to take a moment to re-live the greatness of Bob. Crank up your favorite Bob song, or pop on over to iTunes and give yourself over to 30 seconds of his greatness. Loosen up. Do some easy skanking around your living room. Grab a wooden spoon as your microphone. Grab your partner and play “Bob and back up singer.” What do you have to lose?

Note that iTunes wants almost $30 for a copy of his greatest hits, Legend. Jumping Jehosaphat.