BOB: You know, I treat people as if they were telephones; if I meet somebody I think doesn’t likes me I say I’m Bob, this one is temporarily out of order. You know, don’t break the connection, just hang up and try again!

ANNA: Does it work?

BOB: Well, it seems to…

A remarkably poignant scene from the movie “What About Bob?” as Bob (Bill Murray) and Anna (Katherine Erbe) discuss how Bob (the world’s most hilariously dysfunctional psychiatric patient) handles relationships.

(p.s. Sorry about the poor quality photo! Best I could find of the two of them in the same picture…)

First impressions can be pretty important, don’t you think? For instance, when you meet someone for the first time, those initial opinions can have a dramatic effect on any and all future relations. (Hey, Sally, how did your blind date go tonight? Oh, he’s OK, but I just couldn’t get past that third eye in the middle of his forehead! Ewww – you mean he had a big zit on his forehead? No – it was an actual third eye!)

You know the old saying that it only takes one “uh-oh” to offset one thousand “attaboys”? Well, making a bad first impression is like that saying in reverse – once it happens, it may take 1,000 good things to offset it! Sure, it may not be fair - but there it is.

Anyhoo -

I think moving to a new town is the same way. Have you ever had an occasion when you were, well, really put off by your first impressions of a new place?

A while back (during a brief moment of insanity) I agreed to take a job in Kalamazoo, Michigan. If you’re like me (and if you are, I’m truly sorry about that!), you probably thought Kalamazoo was a made-up name. But no, there really is such a place; it’s actually quite nice, too…

But I gotta tell you about my first impression of the place…

We’d just arrived in town after driving over 1200 miles non-stop (almost twenty hours). We were tired, hungry (it was about lunchtime), and in desperately in need of a place to clean up and catch some sleep.

Naturally, our first task when moving to any town (after locating an appropriate hotel, of course!) is to buy a map. Anyway, as we pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store, we could see these two older gentlemen, one tall and one short, standing there watching us. I could tell they were eyeing the front of the car (where the license plate proudly proclaimed we were from “Texas, the Lone Star State”).

It was really strange, but they continued to stare at us as I got out of the car, so I’m thinkin’ to myself, OK, one or the other is about to say something. Will it be “Welcome to Michigan?” Or what about “You’re a long way from home!” Perhaps even the old stand by, “Been here long?” I mean, it’s what I’d do.

Wrong! (Sound of buzzer, and hey, thanks for playing; have a few lovely parting gifts…) Nope, the tall one looked me right in the eye and said, “You’re gonna hate the winters here!”

Oh, well – just like Bob in that movie scene above, I guess you could say we definitely had a bad connection! Mrs. MZM and I decided it might be best if we hung up and tried again – but maybe this time with, uh, someone else!