We actually used to collect Jesse's. I'm not sure how it started. I guess one wasn't enough. We always had the one, he was there with us in High School. He grew up down the street from several members of our circle, and was always kept around, even when he had nothing to contribute to what we were doing. That's how he wound up in Bob Spelled Backwards. He had no musical talent or skill to speak of, but there he is in all the band photos. He kind of halfway wrote most of a song once, but we didn't even let him play it. We played it for him. We finished it for him. We turned it into a song about how we wouldn't let him do anything called, "Bob Won't Let Me Do Anything". I can't think of another example in history of a band member that was unable to contribute or participate in the band he was a member of in any way. I take that back. Jesse was a member of another band of mine in which he also did nothing. Curious Yellow Blur counted him as a member, but I don't remember what, if anything, he did in the band. He was there with us at shows, but I don't think he was there at practice. It was Jesse that collected our second Jesse, actually. In fact, he more than collected our second Jesse, he actually created our second Jesse. Our freshman year of college, Jesse lived in the same dorm with me. We didn't share a room because Jesse decided that it wasn't important to inform me that we were going to the same college until we actually got there.

During our freshman year, Jesse met a guy that lived next door to him in the dorm named Linwood. He went by Lin for short. Jesse found out that his middle name was actually Jesse. He then told Linwood that he was going to call him Jesse, because he wasn't good with names and knew he could remember Jesse, since it was his own name. For some reason, Lin agreed to this. Jesse then introduced Lin to the rest of us as "Jesse", and we referred to him as such. In short time, it became difficult to determine which Jesse we were speaking of when referring to them in the third person, so we re-named the Jesse formerly known as Lin, "Jesse 2". To my constant amazement, Jesse 2 still goes by Jesse to this day, never deferring back to his original "Linwood" except with his family and older friends that knew him before we re-named him. He even dutifully renders the numeral 2 after his name when in correspondence with any of us that knew him during the college years. Jesse 2 was also in the band Curious Yellow Blur with me and the OG Jesse. This allowed me to introduce the band saying, "Hi, my name is Mark, this is my band-mate Jesse, and this is my other band-mate Jesse". Eventually I would also have them both as roommates, thus allowing a similar introduction substituting "band-mate" with "roommate". We shared 2 houses/apartments together in college. The first also included Mike, thus allowing for a nice, balanced MMJJ initials arrangement. The second replaced Mike with JJ, leaving me as a lone M in a sea of J's.

Around the time of the second apartment, we found another Jesse. By now it was simple common knowledge that he would come to be known as "Jesse 3". Jesse 3, unlike all previous Jesse's, would never participate in any musical endeavor with us. He did become a member of our gaming group, which Jesse 2 never really was interested in doing.

After a couple of years, the Jesse's began to disappear, in the reverse order that they had appeared. Jesse 3 moved to California and vanished from our lives. Jesse 2 went off to grad school in West Virginia. He kept in touch via email. Then, after many long years, the original Jesse, sometimes called Jesse 1, ran off to Arkansas, leaving no contact information behind. So we had lost them all. Except Jesse 2 who kept in touch with me via email, and whom I get together with once a year when he attends a convention in San Diego.

Since we resumed our yearly beach trip tradition last year, we've been desperately trying to find Jesse 1, to no avail. A year of failed efforts to find him had gone by when I decided to try one last time a few weeks ago. I tried an avenue I hadn't tried before. One night after work, I searched for his name on Facebook, finding a list 5 pages long. So I began the tedious task of looking through this long list of Jesse's for ones that might be the one for which I was searching. Around page three, I received notification that I had a new message on Facebook. "Ah, a message", I thought to myself, "I'll see who it's from". I was thinking it would be a nice break from the tedium of Jesse sifting that I had taken on. To my amazement, the message I received on Facebook, while searching Facebook for Jesse was....from Jesse. The same one I was searching for. He popped up on facebook, while I was on Facebook looking for him. That was just too weird. I messaged him back and had him call me on my cellphone. We had a long, hilarious conversation in which I found out that he'd thought I had died in that Peruvian earthquake.

On his Facebook friend list was none other than Jesse 3. The circle is now complete. We have regained our full allotment of Jesse's. Furthermore, Jesse (1) is now dating a girl named Jessi. We have a potential Jesse 4.