The Cheese Ball Call

(How’d this all start anyway?)

It was in the spring of 2008 and I was returning to Minneapolis from speaking at a conference in Virginia. It was there that I had been coaxed into bringing some left over cheese balls home to my three nephews. The big awkward container of cheese balls was wedged between my arm and my body as I waddled with my backpack and suitcase through the Virginia Beach airport. I was somewhere between La La Land and the yellow brick road in my mind, but I still managed to notice the growing grins around me. It seemed as though everyone I passed was motivated to smile as my cheese balls and I passed by.

When I got to security and sent the big container through the x-ray, I was greeted on the other side by eight smiling guards, all curiously, yet joyously eyeing my cheese balls. I opened the container to offer my new friends some snacks, but they politely refused. I left them smiling as I boarded the plane home.

Shortly after take off, the flight attendant drew everyone’s attention as he announced that snacks would be provided by “The Cheese Ball Lady in Isle 9D” over the intercom. This happened not just once or twice, but 3 different times! I had joked about it once or twice with the folks around me, but no one was willing to reach their hand in the open container.

As my journey progressed to the Chicago O’hare airport, I made some friends as a direct result of my cheeseballs. It was becoming hard to deny the fact that these cheese balls were slowly bringing the world together. I finally returned home and shared my jovial adventures with others. It was over dinner that the plans began to unfold and I thought, “Why not carry them around as a way to make people smile?” After all, I had recently heard a statistic that the average person only laughs ten times a day and in the light of that realization and being issued a challenge by my friends, I decided that I was going to bring joy to the world one cheese ball at a time.

The first step was creating a duct tape harness. Then I wore it out in public. Lots of people laughed and it started great conversations, but no one wanted to eat my cheese balls. So, I determined to make a sanitary dispensing system and enlisted the help of my brother, Andy, and Jim, an innocent by stander, employed at Home Depot. When Jim approached my brother and I in the PVC isle, he had no idea what he was getting in to. Now he’s got a verse of a song dedicated to him!

That is the beginning of my story. In April of 2008, I officially began dispensing cheese balls to the public. Don’t worry about germs or freshness because each container is guaranteed fresh with a sealed top, ensuring sanitary cheese balls every time! Be sure to check out my blog on this site, but to see the history and a ton of videos and pictures, take a trip to my original blog by clicking HERE!