I’m sure I’m not the only one that gets those Irritating questions from people when YoYoing in Public. I usually keep my Frustration to myself when I get a stupid question, but this time I couldn’t hold back to the Question they asked, which is a question I get all of time. At Least 1 Person ask me this question every time I yoyo in public. This Morning I went to a Doctors appointment and well I was waiting I started yoyoing and I happen to see someone I’ve known for a while but hadn’t seen for a while. Well I was YoYoing and then the Chick says to me “Um… is that a Real YoYo?”, lol Seriously. Well I’ve been asked it dozens of time and Finally I got frustrated and asked, What is it that makes you think My YoYo is Fake, Do you think I just hold the String and the YoYo does the Tricks for me or Something. I probably was rude and didn’t mean anything by it, but when you practice all the time and get a question like that over and over. She says “No I thought it was one of those Special YoYos” and I got thinking and asked her, Are you Talking about the YoYo with the gadgets inside of it and comes up itself. Shes like “yeah that YoYo, it does tricks right”, GRRRR lol. I said your talking about the Yomega Brain and No the YoYo don’t do the Tricks, I just spent alot of time practicing for a yoyo to my tricks for me. The only thing it’s good for is coming back up to your hand and a paper weight lol. But I apologized for being rude and told her that she’s not the only one to ask that question.
So out of curiosity what Stupid Questions do you get? and how many get the same question “Is that a Real YoYo?”
i hate it when people ask you to walk the dog. i know its a classic trick, but it can ding up a metal yoyo pretty bad. thats why i always carry my yoyofactory ONE arround so i can do walk the dog if someone asks because i dont care if it scratches it still plays fine. better than scuffing up my dv888.
Oh you know the classics like “Can you walk the dog?” , “Is that some kind of special yoyo?” ,and “Do you compete?” (It’s not a bad question just frustrating that when I say no people are convinced that I need to.) .
When people ask if they can try them.
No… Well not for me at least…
if anything most of these questions are just people being curious. How much about yoyos did any of you know before you came to a site like this?
Honestly, I knew almost nothing. I thought split the atom was the mother of all yoyo tricks, and I thought yomega made the greatest yoyos ever. Maybe the stupidest thing I thought is when I saw people talking about whether you could stack a certain yoyo, I literally thought it meant “could you stack it on top of another yoyo”
Well, one question I got once that really annoyed me was from a kid who was a year younger than me who asked me, “Why do you spend so much time yoyoing when you could be playing x box or something?”
I think the everyone can see why that bothered me so much.
Sorry guys this is off topic… ^–But i love your sig, it made me LOL.–^
Oh I know their being Curious and thats all fine and dandy Until they ask if it’s a Real YoYo. oh I hate when they say “Everytime I See you, Your always YoYoing. Why?”. Just to make you ask questions and guess what, It worked, lol
I was using my Mighty Flea the other day and someone wanted to know what it was, so I told them. They were amazed how small it was and how functional.
All I was doing was practicing my binds with it, but it’s all I had handy at the time. They didn’t ask me to do any tricks, thank goodness.
Up and down is good enough for most people. 
The question that people ask me when yoyoing that gets under my skin is
Exactly.
whenever people ask me to walk the dog, I just do an arm grind 
but ugh… this one time I was yoyoing at school, and someone asked me to do walk the dog. So I did an arm grind like I normally do, and he was like… well that’s kinda half nunchucked. Why don’t you just do it on the floor? so I explained that it would damage the yoyo, and that it cost $100 (I was using a g5) and he then proceeded to call me stupid for paying that much, and said that one time wouldn’t hurt it.
On the opposite side of the spectrum though, this one time I was throwing in a ross or something, and I was yoyoing in line. Then while I was walking out, one of the security gaurds stopped me and was like hey, can you do some tricks for me? I don’t even remember what I did, it was just some combo I was working on, and he was like wow, that’s really cool
Instead of giving the long shpeel over how ridiculous it is to ask if I have a real yoyo, I just save energy and say “Yes, yes it is.”
A request for a classic trick yields a classic trick. Requesting Walk the Dog results in am arm grind.
If they want to try, they get a plastic.
Yes, I practice a lot.
Hehe. Yes, I have a life. More than you know.
Oh no, I haven’t gotten girls with it. The act of “getting” girls is shallow and low. If I got one with this silly thing, I’d have to rethink my priorities.
No, you buy most professional yoyos online.
Yeah, I never said yoyos make me cool. I’m a person.
Yeah, you’re right; they do help though.
There actually are competitions.
No, they aren’t in a basement.
“Guys, we have to keep it down. My grandmother just fell asleep.”? Very funny.
For me, just getting the yoyo to come back at first was a major victory. Of course, I was using a clutch yoyo. Move up to a Duncan Imperial: Same results. Ah, gravity pull and sleeper.
Move up to a Dark Magic II and it was “yeah, that’s good”.
Now the newness has worn off and time to press forward. I’m throwing in public mainly because I’m getting bored at my kids’ swim lessons. With the Flea, I don’t even have to stand up most of the time!
I don’t know what I’d do if i get asked to do something like Walk the Dog. I suppose I could shorten the string and walk it on a wood bench. Maybe I should start carrying my ONE around since I am keeping that responsive. I don’t want to mess up a nice yoyo. Not to say the ONE isn’t nice, it’s just one that I’m not planning to worry about a whole lot.
What would Rock The Baby be on a Flea? Rock the Embryo?
Would Walk the Dog become Walk the Puppy?
Better throwing a yoyo than just sitting there doing nothing. Yoyo ain’t blocking my vision and I can still keep an eye on the kids during their lessons. Now that fat lady causing a solar eclipse on the other hand…
I hate it when people ask me to do an around the world while I’m in the school hallway. The teachers get mad and I’ll probably hit the ceiling, so I just do a gunslinger instead. However, I don’t yoyo at school anymore, because the fattest, ugliest most unpopular kid at school just HAD to start yoyoing, so if I yoyoed then everyone made fun of me. The worst part is he doesn’t even do any tricks, he just uses a Duncan Imperial to go up and down. >:(
I welcome questions. It’s nice to see people take an interest in anything positive. It’s become the fad to hate anything unfamiliar or that you cant do or understand. I do understand that some questions are silly, but I view it as an attempt to break the ice. If they are interested enough to initiate a conversation I’m glad to visit with them.
The conversations get better after the first question if you guide the conversation the correct direction.
This kind of got on my nerves the other day, as much as I enjoyed the fact that I caught someone’s interest in yoyos. I was at my niece’s softball tournament the other day when I decided to do some 5A stuff. A 5-year-old kid comes by and watches me do some stuff. Impressed, he asks me if he can try. Naturally, I let him give it a go. Next thing I know, the yoyo’s just aimlessly being swung around into the ground (thankfully I was on grass and he was just using my FH2 which had some love marks on it already). After a minute of this reckless yoyoing, I stop him and try to show him how to properly throw. 5 seconds later after actually attempting, the aimless swinging begins again. In the end, I had some knots starting to form (which I was able to undo). I got my yoyos back from him and told him I had to go (which I headed off somewhere, then headed back a while later.
I do often hear “Walk the dog!” in which I’ll whip out an arm grind instead. They then reply “That’s not walking the dog!” when I then explain that I don’t want to bang up the metals. The other burning thing to hear is “Oh, let me try that blue metal one!” (points at my No.9). I then have to explain that it’s expensive, the string’s too long for them and I don’t want it to fly apart. In turn, I hand them a plastic to try.
I get this pair of questions from strangers a lot.
“Is that a yo-yo?” followed by “How old are you?”
The answers are “yes” and “37”
The second question annoys me.
I have often tried to show off ‘Modern’ tricks to the uninitiated.
But it is the ‘old school’ that impresses them more.
D
“why are you playing with a kids toy?”
Why am I playing with a kid’s toy?
Someone has to play with it.
For what I do for a living, for me it’s basically being a big kid. The only difference is my toys costs a LOT more! Big audio desk, big mains, expensive microphones. The world of pro audio is crazy. It’s not FOR kids, but you gotta often be a kid(at heart) to get the stuff done. Many of us have some strange choices of things we do.
Some like motorcycles. Some like drugs(they often tend to not last very long). Some are into guns, some are into archery. Some are into many other things, most being very expensive habits/hobbies(top fuel dragsters? Not me!)
I was into archery. Still am, but with young kids around, it’s not wise anymore. The bow is out of reach and the bowstring is locked away with the target tips that are removed from the arrows. Otherwise, my hobbies would be doing different aspects of pro audio. Yoyo takes me COMPLETELAY out of that.
I’m 39 right now. I could care less what people think. And I just started doing this. I’m having a good time.
My objective within a year is to be doing simple presentations to pre schools, kindergarten and first grade classes. Nothing in depth, just more of a simple introduction, show a few tricks, show off some yoyos, answer some questions.
Not to knock video games, I enjoy video games, but with my kids, there’s too many battery operated toys, which do include my Game Boy units and other video game systems that are either mine or my kids. I think there’s still tons of enjoyable toys that don’t need to be plugged in or require electricity to be fun.
What does get me is that my kids want to be right where I do NOT need them to be when I try to practice. Or the dogs want to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But seeing as I can’t practice when they are around, I practice after they all(wife and kids) go to bed. Now I catch flack for going to bed late. Whatever.
Why yoyo? Why not! Fun is fun! Don’t be raining on my parade!