Bob And The Essence Of Love!
The following story about Bob and the essence of love is purely fictional. It in no way has anything to do with the McKinney family’s travels through Spain. Any similarities would be purely coincidental.
The sudden shriek of his daughter Harrah brought Bob out of his daydream and back to reality. His brain struggled to process what it was he was seeing. They were in a restaurant. They were in Spain. They were eating lunch. His normally cool and collected daughter was dancing up and down screeching and pointing at her arm.
“There’s a huge bug on my arm. It’s under my sleeve! It’s going to sting me!” she wailed, swinging her arm wildly around and coming close to knocking her plate of Paella onto the floor. Bob looked carefully and sure enough he saw it. There was indeed a huge beetle sized lump on his daughter’s arm under the sleeve of her loose fitting shirt. It was hard to tell how much it was moving however because of the excessive arm waiving that was going on.
“Bob do something!” his wife Dobbie shouted at him.
“Is it a bee?” his son Bobbin cried out pushing his chair further back against the wall.
Bob decided it was time to take action. Decisive action. He jumped up and around the table, grabbing his daughter’s wrist with his right hand. With the thumb and forefinger of his left hand he grabbed for the moving lump. Catching it, he began to squeeze; listening for the crunching sound that would tell him the bug was dead. Bob squeezed and squeezed, refusing to let go and becoming increasingly concerned that this must be some kind of super bug. It wasn’t crunching. Suddenly the bug squirted out from between his fingers and shot down the now stretched sleeve of his daughter’s shirt.
Fearing a sting from the now angered bug, Harrah’s arm gyrations became more and more violent and her arm was ripped from Bob’s grasp. Suddenly a white lump shot out of her sleeve and landed on the middle of the lunch table. Everybody was silent and still waiting to see what the “bug” was going to do next.
“Wait just a minute”, a now curious Bobbin whispered. “That’s not a bug. That’s just a piece of chicken! Harrah must have dropped it down her sleeve while she was eating.” Harrah suddenly turning a scarlet red, went silent and sank quietly down into her seat. Bob looked around the restaurant at the sea of uncomprehending Spanish faces.
“It’s alright” he said. “I got the bug. It’s dead!” and sat down.
The family had been touring Spain for about a week and was currently in the beautiful town of Granada. Bob still wasn’t quite sure how he felt about Spain. They had been stuck driving a beast of an SUV and that combined with the narrow streets and the elevated testosterone levels of the local population were adding nicely to Bob’s stress levels. Add to that the perverse insistence of every hotel in Spain to possess an underground parking lot that a scooter could not navigate through and Bob was quickly approaching the point of a nervous breakdown. The thought of spending two days in the city on foot was incredibly appealing right now, and Bob was looking forward to getting started.
Lunch for the family was a major concession on Bob’s part. They had been on edge for the last week, ever since Bob had implemented his new plan to reduce their travel budget. The two meals a day plan was starting to draw some complaints and Bob thought it might be prudent to throw them a bone before things got too far out of hand. They had spotted a wonderful looking café on a back street just a short distance away from their hotel. The paella had looked good and they had just settled in before Harrah had had her little incident.
Despite the “incident”, the food was spectacular. They had all ordered the Paella house special and drinks with a beer chaser for Bob. All of a sudden the front door of the café opened and a rather odd little old man appeared. After a second glance however Bob realized that the old man was not all that little. He just looked small because of the truly humungous tattered grey robe he was wearing along with his size 14 ½ bunny slippers. Despite the rather odd attire, the old gentleman was rather well groomed in a Spanish Don sort of way, and he certainly seemed to know his way around the restaurant.
As he ambled up to the family’s table, Bob began to search his brain for traditional Spanish greetings. “Ola!” Bob said. The old man just looked puzzled. “OOOla!” Bob tried again with a smile. Still no response. Then all of a sudden, the old man smiled and reached across the table and took Bob’s fork from his hand. Placing the fork on Bob’s half eaten lunch he then proceeded to whisk the plate away right out from under Bob’s nose! “Hey wait a minute!” Bob shouted. “Uh, Uno momento!”. The gentleman paused, smiled and then quickly reached across the table once again. This time it was Bobbin’s fork and plate that got snatched away. Before they realized it, the family’s lunch had been carted off by the smiling old guy and was now sitting on the dirty dish pile on top of the bar.
Bob did the only thing left for him to do. He took a firm grip on his beer glass and pounded it back. Belching loudly he called out in English “Let’s see you try to steal my beer now, you old fart!”
All of a sudden the restaurant owner and the waiter appeared through the back door, and the entire restaurant broke out in shouts and waving arms. Bob’s immediate thought was “Oh no, I shouldn’t have said that!” “What is going on here?” Dobbie shouted over the din when it became apparent that neither Bob nor his statement was the object of the violent disagreement. Then just as suddenly as he appeared, the old guy swooped his cape over his shoulder, put his chin up in the air and stomped out the front door.
The waiter quickly appeared by the table. “I am very sorry senor. I hope he didn’t bother you too much. He is a local man. Very Loco! He means no harm, but he thinks he works at all the restaurants here. A different day, a different restaurant.”
“No harm done.” Dobbie piped in. “We were pretty much done anyway. Just the check please.”
“But I wasn’t finished yet” protested Bob after the waiter had left.
“Oh Bob. Don’t worry about it. You could stand to loose some of those love handles anyway” Dobbie replied quickly putting an end to any argument.
Soon the family was out the door and moving through the alleyways in search of their next destination, the famous Cathedral of Granada. Walking out of a small alley into a small square, they finally saw it. It was huge and beautiful and gothic, just like the pictures. It was also flanked by hordes of German tourists. Around them, circling like sharks looking for a fresh kill were about 30 or so, rather overweight short little old ladies. All dressed in vintage 1970 sweat outfits. “I wonder what they are doing” Harrah asked as she saw a couple approach a German gentleman and wave what looked like a half dried bunch of parsley in his face.
“I don’t know” Bob was about to reply when all of a sudden he found his nose in the middle of a bunch of dry green twigs. Swatting the bouquet away with his hand, he was faced with the toothless face of a 210 pound, 5 foot 1 inch woman dressed in the oldest, smelliest track suit he had ever seen.
“The senor must buy some “essence of love” for his lovely bride” the toothless fitness guru wannabe seemed to say. “The scent alone is enough to drive women wild with passion.” She winked knowingly and elbowed Bob, smiling.
“Hey, that’s nothing but an old bunch of rosemary.” Dobbie said. “Get away from here. We are definitely not interested.”
The old woman was not overly impressed and reaching up touched the lower part of her right eye with the fingernail of her right hand. “Oh no Mom! You’ve been cursed” Bobbin cried out. “Cursed smursed. It’s just a scam” Dobbie intoned as she marched off around the corner of the cathedral.
Bob followed slowly behind, looking over his shoulder and not quite sure if they might not have been better off having purchased a twig or two just to be on the safe side. He didn’t go another 10 feet however when another slightly younger, but certainly larger woman accosted him in exactly the same manner. Over the next 10 minutes the same scene played itself out at least 7-8 times, and Bob’s nose was starting to get sore from all of the rosemary leaves being shoved up it.
“I wonder if they ever actually sell any of it.” Harrah asked suddenly.
“I wonder where they are getting it from.” Dobbie replied. “I haven’t seen any in the local shops, and they aren’t exactly carrying a purse full of the stuff around them are they?”
At that point, Bob and Bobbin had had enough of the little old ladies constantly accosting them and their noses. Deciding to head back to the hotel early, they left Harrah and Dobbie to see the rest of the Cathedral on their own.
Walking quickly, Bob and Bobbin retraced their steps back around the Cathedral suddenly finding themselves out of the mass of tourists that seemed to have attracted the “essence sellers” in the first place. They rounded the last corner and came to a sudden stop.
There in front of them were three of the “essence” sellers. Each had the front of their sweat pants pulled open with one hand, while reaching for a bunch of rosemary that had been shoved into their underwear with the other.
“Oh my god!” shouted Bobbin suddenly wiping his nose on his sleeve. “They keep those weeds down their pants!”
“Well I guess we know now where the “essence” in the “essence of love” comes from muttered Bob, shaking his head in disbelief.
That night as they were getting ready for bed, Dobbie reached over to Bob with a smile. “Bob, I hope you aren’t too mad, but after you and Bobbin left us, I bought a little something. Here tell me what it smells like.” All Bob saw at that moment was a flash of green being brought up to his nose.
“Oh God!” he managed to shout, swatting Dobbie’s hand reflexively. “Get that disgusting stuff away from me”. That was when he looked down and saw the growing puddle of perfume pouring out of the green bottle that was now lying broken on the bathroom floor.
“Bob! That was $60 worth of perfume you just spilled all over the bathroom floor! I hope you’re happy” Dobbie said as she stormed out the door back into the bedroom.
As Bob pulled up a piece of the couch (now his bed for the night), he couldn’t help but wonder. “Maybe there was something to the old woman’s curse after all ….”