Lately Facebook has began to suck a tremendous energy from my soul. Between nasty political debates and endless stories about how crappy humans are to one another it's easy to want to take a hiatus from it.

Tonight I was reminded why I keep the app on my phone. Nestled in the comments of a childhood friend’s Facebook post was a word that I hadn’t heard in about thirty years. In fact the term was completely erased from my memory. What was this word that unleashed a time capsule of memories?

B-o-b-o

It’s funny because back in the seventies bobo was a word of shame. Bobo was a derogatory term but it was a shame all of us shouldered. Me, my brother Curt, my friend Sean, and our other friend Shawn all grew up on Elizabeth Avenue in a lower middle class neighborhood on the eastside of Columbus, Ohio. Before any of us had the means to scratch together our own money with paper routes or lawn jobs our parents had to buy our clothes and shoes. None of our parents had a lot of extra money so those shoes were always bobos.

Just incase you aren’t familiar with the term bobo or have forgotten (like I did) bobo was a term for generic, no-name shoes. Bobos never cost more than ten dollars, they sported, “Made in Taiwan” on the label, smelled like burning rubber, and were almost always from Kmart. I have to hand it to the Taiwanese, they were inventive.

I suspect the foundation of the entire modern Chinese economy was built by the bobo tycoons of the 1970’s making knock-offs of popular brands like Nike and Adidas. At first glance bobos looked strikingly similar to the popular name brands but had crazy features that were just a little off like an upside down Nike swoosh or four stripes instead of three for the Adidas-style shoes (as in the picture above).

When new, bobos were like magic. The funny thing about bobos is all of us were convinced that we could run just a little faster and jump higher when our bobos were brand new. This magic wore off in just a few days when they were covered in mud and grass stains. The life span of pair of bobos was way too short, it only took a month before they look like they had been run over by a herd of buffalo. Between Curt, Sean, Shawn, and I our parents likely paid for the Taiwanese bobo factory several times over.

In retrospect I think bobos were actually a good thing. Those parents of the seventies were wise because bobos built character. In our neighborhood you weren’t measured by the clothes or the shoes you wore. You were measured by how fast you could run, how high you could jump, or how far could sail off of a flimsy plywood ramp on your BMX bike (sans helmet or knee pads.)

So many children walk around these days with an air of entitlement. I would bet a majority of kids now would refuse to step out their front doors without their smartphones, let alone wearing non-name brand shoes.

Children of the seventies, this is our chance to make a difference in the world. We need only pool our money together, stoke the flames of that Taiwanese factory, and get it churning out bobos again. Parents, it will be difficult, but you must work together. You must not buy your children another pair of name brand shoes ever again. From here on out it’s nothing but bobos. We can do it, together we will change the world, one child (and one awesome pair of bobos) at a time.

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