Yesterday I walked into Walgreens and there it was: “Adam Bottiglia, Yo-yo Master,” right there on the packaging of the Peter Fish yo-yo’s, complete with the video display that also featured Adam getting his yo-yo groove on. You can watch Adam in action or see me show the video to Lexi.
More than just a resurgence of the yo-yo (can I claim to be ahead of the trend?), this is my old yo-yo buddy making it big (if you consider “big” to be featured on yo-yo packaging and in a video loop in an aisle of Walgreens stores across the country). Adam is the guy who taught me how to yo-yo when we were both Petra-loving, Christian T-shirt-wearing geeks. We had a yo-yo ministry in high school (that was even featured in the Detroit Free Press, complete with crazy cool photo). He taught me how to do street performing in Chicago, which made a crazy summer adventure even crazier. He was in my wedding and I was in his.
So you can understand why I think it’s pretty cool to see my friend on the packaging of a yo-yo. I think it’s so cool I bought four of ’em.
You can see more of Adam in action at YoTricks.com. And check out the yo-yos. $3.99 is dirt cheap for ball bearing yo-yos (back in the day we paid at least $20) and they work pretty good.
Fun fact: Adam and I had the chance to be yo-yo pros back in 1998. As I recall, the Yomega corporation offered us something like $20,000 to be their touring yo-yo pros. Being a freshman in college, that was the equivalent of a year’s tuition and not tempting enough to get us to drop out and become professional yo-yoers (besides, I don’t think I was ever that good). It’s cool to see Adam still chasing the dream.
Seeing your boyhood pal’s success and fame featured in Walgreens doesn’t make you feel even a tiny bit like a slacker-slash-loser? :-)
Being of a previous generation than yourself, I’m still waiting for clackers to make a comeback.
Actually, no. Seeing Adam’s success makes me really happy for him. I’m probably not jealous because I know I couldn’t do what he’s doing. And I don’t feel like a slacker/loser because I’m doing my own thing.
It probably helps that I’ve learned that “success” like this is never really the success we think it is. Having your face slapped on yo-yo’s in Walgreens across the country doesn’t make you rich.
I saw Adam on 30 seconds to fame tv show tonight. Good to see he still has skills. I met Adam at Word of Life Bible Institute. He taught me some tricks and I bought one of his yoyos then. Wish I still had it. I have no earthly idea what I did with it. I am going to have to get another one and start up with it again. Seeing him on that show (that I don’t usually watch but was flipping through when I heard his name) brought back some fond memories.