The People Whisperer

          You’ve all heard of horse whisperers and dog whisperers, but I am married to a people whisperer.

          I’ve never met anyone quite like St. Bob.  And since this is his birthday month, I am paying tribute to this incredible man and his amazing talents.  Bob used to host and announce TV game shows, but he’s more than a handsome guy with a great voice. 

This man can look into an audience of a thousand people and instantly choose the one person who will jump up and down and scream if she wins, the one person who is terrified of mice, the one person who will take a crazy risk—whatever the act calls for.  Bob can tell a thousand things about you just at a glance.  And he’s always dead-on. Here he is when he was the host of NBC-TV's "Let's Make a Deal":

          Like Superman looking through walls with x-ray vision, Bob can anticipate what someone will say.  And more than once I have clasped my hands over my forehead and said, “Stop reading my mind.  That’s private property.”

          He combines this supernatural ability with some kind of weird Salesman Gene and another Charm Chromosome, and the next thing you know, the whole world is under his enchantment, doing whatever he tells them to. And you ought to see the ladies who melt just chatting with him. Mind you, he is not encouraging this, and is even clearly oblivious to it, but it still happens all the time.

 In our church we’re assigned to visit one another, and Bob was assigned an elderly woman to whom we delivered some Christmas presents one year. While I was standing not ten inches away from him, she leaned between us and whispered into his ear, “I love you!”  Thank goodness she was 30 years his senior.

This is not the first time a woman has had a crush on him. Here’s another totally true example.  At a recent seminar the woman leading it sidled up to him afterwards, while I was standing right there, and asked if he had any brothers.  She kept bumping up against him and saying what a catch he is, and exactly her type.  It was one of those moments when you want to say, “I’m right here; I can hear you.” Later Bob pooh-poohed her interest, but I’m telling you she was practically licking his face.

You know, I can hardly blame these gals for falling under his spell; I still find his charms irresistible.  He’s like a Pied Piper who doesn’t even need a flute—people will just fall in line and follow him. Maybe one reason it works is that he’s not trying to be a smooth operator; he’s just sincerely sweet.  So Happy Birthday, St. Bob—may you be surrounded by luscious cakes and pies, and may all the women in our lives realize I’m standing right here.

St. Bob is also the cameraman for my YouTube Mom videos here, in case you’d like to see yet another of his many talents!