Sometimes my Dad and I will call each other “Bob,” even though neither of us is named Bob. The reason goes back to a car commercial from about fifteen years ago. In the commercial, the narrator, Bob, talks about how his life would be a dream if only he had that certain kind of car. It would be as if he has his own lane on the highway. The signs would say “Yield to Bob” and the green lights would say “Go Bob.” And of course, he could pull up to the curb in a lane marked “No Parking Except for Bob.”
In the commercial, Bob parks the car and a cop eyes him and then realizes, “Oh, it’s you, Bob!” When this commercial was running, sometimes my Dad and I would run into each other and say, “Oh, it’s you, Bob!” We kept it up for a long time. We don’t do it much anymore, but every once in a while one of us will drop a “Bob” reference.
Anyway, I got to thinking about this today, and wondered if that commercial was on YouTube. I took a guess that it was a Nissan ad, which turned out to be right, and sure enough, here it is: