I’m always looking to help people out. I’ve heard others talking about me, saying how I’m one of the most helpful people around. I used to just think that maybe I had dreamt that up, because a part of me knew that it sounded way too cocky if I actually acknowledged that I overheard somebody saying that. But then I definitely heard someone else saying the same thing, again. I’m pretty sure it was somebody different. So even if the first time was a dream, which I’m not even positive that it was, the second time had to have been real. Who dreams about the same thing two times? I’ve never done that. I don’t even think it’s possible.

Always willing to lend a helping hand, that’s me. It’s like my unofficial motto. My official motto is, “Try to always be on the lookout for an opportunity to help out.” But it’s a little too official, if you know what I’m getting at. Sometimes you might have a great concept for a motto or a cool idea and it’s taking shape in your head and your playing around with it as the words roll off of your tongue. But as soon as you make it official, as soon as you lay that stamp down upon it, saying, OK, this is it, my official motto, something happens to it, something immediate. All of the sudden it’s set in stone, it’s too formal, it’s too institutionalized, and you wish it weren’t your official motto anymore. But it’s too late, way too late, it’s already official. You’ve already punctuated the whole motto with official quotation marks. It just doesn’t have that same energy anymore. It’s stale, stuck. So that’s why I only stick with unofficial mottos.

My helpful nature is just that, natural. A lot of the time I feel like I have to protect it from outside influences. Like, a lot of the time, because I’m so helpful, people will offer my services to other people, just by knowing me, just by knowing my helpful nature naturally wants to help out. But that’s not really me being helpful. It’s like someone else being helpful. And so I feel like I’m not actually helping out, but the other person, the person who referred me to help out is actually being the helpful one. They’re providing the help. It’s like if you asked that person to borrow a screwdriver, and they said yes, that person wouldn’t sit back and think to themselves, wow, what a great screwdriver. No, they’d think, wow, what a great friend. I’m nobody’s tool.

That’s why I never use screwdrivers. I always just hold the screw into the wall and push as hard as I can until it makes a tiny indentation in the drywall. After the indentation gets as deep as it gets just by my pressing it in there, I’ll try my best to, while still applying pressure, turn it ever so steadily with my bare hands as it carves its way slowly into the wall. It takes forever. And you have to use really long screws to get a good grip. And it’s much easier if you get screws with really big heads, because it’s much easier for your fingers. People always come over my house and look at my oversized and often poorly placed screws sticking out of the walls, doing a terrible job of holding up my pictures and paintings, sticking out in certain spots where I had once screwed something in, only to realize a little later that that’s not where I should have put the screw, but now the screw is in there, and it took me forever to get it in there, and how am I supposed to get it out? And they’re like, Rob, what did you screw these in with your hands? You know you could have just borrowed my screwdriver. I have a bunch.

But listen, I’m the helpful one, the most helpful. What kind of a helpful person would I be if I were always going around to my friends and family asking for help? Then part of me would feel obliged the next time I was in a conversation talking about who is the most helpful to bring up that time that I was helped out by this person or that person or so and so. No, I’d rather just stand back and listen to people feel obliged to talk about how helpful I am. He’s so helpful, that Rob, but so independent, and so resourceful. He never asks anything of anybody. That’s what they’ll have to say. Because it will be true. Or it is true. Or it will have still been true.