why did bobby have to move..?

i couldn't sleep. why did bobby have to move.. since i had arrived in osaka, every one i had met knew about bobby. all i had to do was mention "ecc" & "okayama" and they would say, "oooohhh... you're replacing bobby!"

among ecc employees and otherwise, bobby lived in INFAMY!! EVERYONE knew about it! they had either met bobby or knew someone who had. it was incredible how popular his story was - but when i asked, all i got was vague answers and dodging behavior. no one would give me a straight answer.. why did bobby have to move?

- bobby was the ecc employee i'd been sent to replace. i had actually asked for the guy's email pre-departure and sent him an embarrassingly long list of stupid questions. he responded at equally embarrassing length - still he seemed like a nice enough guy. i was afraid bobby had left okayama because of a manager-from-hell scenario or some similarly bad situation i was about to get myself into. in his reply he told me that the school was great, that the director and the staff were great, that he loved it there! because there is only one small school in okayama, he even had the rare opportunity to get to know the students and staff really well. "this could also become a problem," he hinted. bobby was moved on a company decision - i had guessed it was the repercussion of an inappropriate relation with a student or staff member.

after hearing so much about bobby without hearing a damn thing about bobby, i wasn't so sure anymore. i now had a complex web of single sentence hints from which i was trying to triangulate a nebular region of likelihood in what could be described mathematically as bobby-space. bobby had been described as memorable, weird, really outgoing, a special case, a great guy, and a bit of a nerd. i had heard that bobby wasn't working out, that he wasn't fitting in, that he wasn't doing a great job, and that he just had to get out of there. one clue was a constant: all would be made clear when i met him.

why would i have to meet him to understand? was he a cripple-midget-rastafarian that was pressured to leave through racial tension? was he a mad beatnik revivalist? how would meeting him help me understand why he had to leave?

i couldn't sleep..

at work the next day i was a wreck and the kids training was dragging me all around the mulberry bush. i still couldn't stop thinking about bobby. at the end of the day i was asked to see personnel upstairs. i was taking over 2 of bobby's upper level classes and had to schedule some extra training. i was also taking over bobby's old apartment. who is this guy who's life i've been handed? why did he have to move? i tried one last time to pry - "and what mistake am i learning from, exactly?"

it was a collection of personnel that eventually gave it away through discrete nods to narrow and narrower questions (even that word, "discrete," having been written on a cigarette pack as a piece of good advice). bobby had indeed been involved in multiple inappropriate relationships with students. i should have just gone with my gut.

it was finally solved! i could go home and finally forget all about bobby. it was a somewhat disappointing ending to the mystery - the truth hardly seemed a story worth the infamy it had risen to. i punched out and stepped into the elevator. just as the doors were closing a tiny hobnail boot was stuffed in-between the doors. they shuddered and slowly opened to reveal a dreadlocked midget in a wheelchair wearing a diaper and a 10-gallon hat. "oh!" i said, "you must be bobby!" (that last part isn't true - sorry) -mike!