Just the other day, in the middle of going over a homework set on potential energy, AR says "Hey, what can you tell us about a guy named Craig Ball?"
Assuming he was checking out an old entry on this blog, I launched right into a couple of my favorite Craig Ball Stories. After I'm done, I say "Well, you must've done a deep dive on my blog to come up with that name, I don't even remember blogging about him before." AR responds "Not on your blog! He made a comment on an old WSPN article about you." Well, well, well - flattered that you googled me up on the internets, Craig! Hope you are doing well and have learned to love vegetables and control the unlicensed use of the letter 's' when it come to your name!
Craig Ball was a physics major alongside of me at Purdue in the late 80's. We were dorm-mates, room-mates, and apartment mates for three years. One day we were trading stories about kids making fun of our our names in grade school and whatnot (John Zello was 'Zohn Jello' as I recall), and Craig complained about one of his high school math teachers always calling him "Craig Balls" or "Mr. Balls" and so on. Craig tried to correct him, but for some reason, that particular teacher never changed his ways. Then, one day late in the school year, Craig turned his work in and got up to sharpen his pencil. Now, in this class, Craig sat in the back row and the teacher liked the work to be passed to the front to be collected. When Craig got up, he noticed the kid seated right in front of him quietly, quickly, and discretely adding an 's' to the end of his name as he passed it forward. All of us listening to that story were just awe-struck with that literal stroke of casual comedy. We all took a silent moment of appreciation for that unsung comedic genius.
Another interesting fun fact about Craig was that he (admirably in my estimation) decided to become a vegetarian for moral reasons after he got to college. Thing is, he hated vegetables and, as a consequence, became super skinny and a bit sickly looking at times. In a way that made me both admire him more and worry about him at the same time. Also, he was a pacifist (more cool points!) and yet his favorite sport.... boxing (intriguing, right?)
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