RECORD STORE TALES #1212: Origins of a Nickname: BOBOE

The hits keep on rolling in.  Another friend from my highschool has passed.  Anand Etwaru was only 53.

I haven’t seen Anand since graduation day in summer of 1991.  I wanted to keep in touch, but life took us to different schools and we never met again.  However, I suppose I was never too far away from Anand, because I discovered in his obituary that he was still using the nickname that I gave him, or a shortened version thereof:  “Bo” for “Boboe”.

Recapping the tale from Record Store Tales #820: The Last Note of Freedom:  it’s just the ASCII characters for “Anand” with each letter bumped up by one, an accidental discovery I made.  It happened in Grade 11 computers class.  We were learning BASIC programming.  Playing with the ASCII system of characters, the teacher prompted us to play around and see what happens.  Each letter had a corresponding number.  A was 65, B was 66, and so on and so forth.  I created a line of code to add “1” to each letter.  So, A:  65+1=66, which is B.

I typed ANAND into the computer.  It added 1 to each character, and spat out BOBOE.

I shrieked in laughter, told  my friends, and the name stuck.  “BOBOE” was even a final exam question.  Anand was Boboe.  For life.

Rest in peace, old friend.