My ultimate destination was family in the Washington, DC, area, but with school not starting until September and no big rush to get there, I first spent a week in Anaheim, California, for the National Computer Conference (NCC) – now that was cool and huge – then Redwood City up north to visit and stay with another uncle for a couple of weeks.

Redwood City was nice… and exceedingly boring. Not really Redwood City’s fault – I was 16, used to getting around on my own, on the verge of young adulthood, and barely into it when I suddenly found myself in a land and environment I not only wasn’t too familiar with, I didn’t have a car or a driver’s license. That was my first lesson: To get around in the US, at least the parts I was going to find myself in, getting a license and car was job one.

But that wasn’t happening anytime soon. Worse, kids my age were still in school, with the American summer not due to start for a few more weeks. Dang.

Not that my uncle’s home was a dud. Far from it. It was gorgeous, somewhere I’d love to be right this second – huge, Jacuzzi, man-made lake, sun deck, dock, power boat, pool table – the man lived pretty gosh-darned well. Not that that mattered for more than a day to a 16-year-old with no one to hang out with and no wheels to get anywhere.

One other nice thing about that house: It was about a couple of miles or so away from the original Marine World Africa USA theme park. The park’s no longer there – last I checked, it had relocated to Vallejo in the mid-80s and is now called something else – but back then, although not all that close in the grand scheme of things, I figured when I got really bummed about not having anything to do and no one to do it with, I could walk to Marine World from my uncle’s house. Which is exactly what I did one weekday morning.

I hadn’t planned on going that day, not that I was doing much planning about anything, but the point is that just out of the blue, after breakfast that morning, I felt like doing the park all by my lonesome. Talk about fortuitous. I ended up witnessing something that most definitely was not on anybody’s agenda – not then, not ever. Here’s what I saw.

You’ve probably heard of the late Gunther Gebel-Williams, the beefy long blond-locked German animal trainer of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus fame. To this day, if someone mentions trained lions and tigers, I think him. Now, heck if I know if he ever performed at Marine World Africa USA, but you can’t really blame folks for thinking that he did even if it turns out that he really didn’t – for a number of years, his visage and name were so synonymous with “animal trainer,” particularly of large cats, that everybody seemed to start hiring beefy long blond-haired animal trainers with German-sounding names. That day at Marine World Africa USA, there was such a shirtless German-monikered blondie cracking the whip for the park’s big cat attraction – in all likelihood one of the look-alikes and name sound-alikes and not the famous trainer himself, but I honestly couldn’t tell you for sure since I really wasn’t paying all that much attention to him. I was watching his cats.

That day in particular, the announcer was proud to proclaim that it was the very first time (maybe for Marine World Africa USA, at least) that lions and tigers were performing in the ring at the same time. Apparently, the two cats really do not get along (now, I did not know that!) and typically do not perform in the same ring together. But Mr. Muscular Shirtless Long-Haired German Blondie down in the ring cracking his whip and directing the wild maned lions and the gorgeous tigers to and fro – well, seemed that he was man enough to get the maneaters to work together.

It wasn’t a very big caged ring. Trying to remember it all now almost three decades later, I’d say I’d be very generous estimating the ring’s diameter at 20 yards, but let’s put it at that number. The back of the ring was up against a wall, the middle of which was where the cats entered and exited; you couldn’t see much of anything beyond that. In front of the ring was where we, the audience, sat, on fixed chairs going around the ring, probably going up maybe 10 rows. It really wasn’t all that big — the whole thing was in an enclosure, maybe to help keep the animals from getting spooked.

I was about four rows away from the ring and dead center. Since it was a weekday, the show wasn’t packed – probably half full, if that – so I really couldn’t have asked for a better time and vantage point to take the whole thing in.

It was an impressive show. Mr. Muscular Shirtless Long-Haired German Blondie had full control of his cats. They were moving around the ring at his command, jumping and pacing all about, leaping effortlessly from one pedestal to another, through rings and other obstacles… and all so precise and measured! And they worked the “lions vs. tigers” thing to full effect, having the two sets of cats alternating closely on the various tasks.

Good show. Then it got really interesting.

I think the show was nearing the end at this point, and the lions and tigers were alternating leaping and posing on the pedestals one more time. First the lions, jumping up on the platforms distributed evenly along the ring’s perimeter and directed to wave their paws at the audience. Round of applause. Whip CRACK! The lions jump off and the tigers jump on, the lions directed to walk around the center getting ready to exit through the back. Most of the lions had already moved to the rear, save for one who was still busy trying to navigate his way back. He was right in front of me, just four rows away. Round of applause. Whip CRACK! The tigers jumped off the pedestals, the one sitting on the one nearest to me landing squarely on the back of the last lion by accident.

That’s when the proverbial shit hit the fan.

Sharks vs. Jets? Amateurs. I’m telling you, you haven’t seen a rumble until you’ve seen lions and tigers go at it. There were at least four cats on each side, quite possibly more. All thought of exiting the ring completely forgotten – they all jumped into the fight. Roaring, snarling, slashing, biting, chomping, clawing, wrestling, it was all there in front of me. And fast. Heck if you could keep track of which cat was doing what to whom. Blood? Yeah, they got bloody, but surprisingly enough, not as much as you would think. But yup, those cats were getting injured.

The cage around the ring – that started shaking and swaying as the cats threw each other around and slammed their bodies against it. That’s when I realized the damn cage around the ring wasn’t fixed and permanent. It was one of those things you see at the circus that could be easily assembled and disassembled as-needed. That pretty much explained the audience screaming and running around me, looking for a quick exit. Me? Butt glued to my seat, mesmerized.

I think the spectacle of the big cat fight was enough to keep me watching, but what got me leaning forward for a better view was this: Mr. Muscular Shirtless Long-Haired German Blondie was not only in the thick of it, he had his beefy arms around their necks trying to pull the enraged snarling beasts apart! I don’t care where you’re from or what you’ve seen and experienced… that was impressive.

It took a while, but eventually he managed to clear that ring, but not by his lonesome. Marine World Africa USA workers managed to come out and assist with a couple of fire hoses – they started spraying the cats. It looked like they were working hard not to blast them too strongly lest they hurt them, while Mr. Muscular Shirtless Long-Haired German Blondie directed their hosing efforts, barking orders while always seemingly having at least one of his cats in a headlock. Slowly, one-by-one, he led each cat to the rear exit. The cats were really P.O.’d and wanted to keep on fighting, continuously roaring and snarling and resisting everything, but slowly, the trainer got each through the exit and into the hands of more handlers.

Whew! The ring finally empty, I sat back and took a quick look around me. The place had emptied — there were, however, still five of us there in our seats. The announcer came on the PA: “Marine World Africa USA would like to thank all of you who did not panic and remained in your seats.” There were only five of us left. Yeah, that was really funny.

One more thing I learned that day: A really pissed off big cat stays really pissed off. Although they had managed to bring the cats to their holding cells, for hours after the incident and throughout much of the park, you could hear enraged roars and snarling from the severely agitated kitties. It sure made for an interesting day at the park. So, if you ever encounter a lion or tiger – or any huge cat for that matter – do not ever ever ever, under any circumstances, piss it off. If you’re going to kill it, kill it…do not futz with it.

P.S. I’ve never seen this incident mentioned anywhere. Not then in the papers (although, to be fair, I wasn’t looking that hard), and definitely not now, online. Let me know if anyone comes across any info on this.

But mark my words — in a few years #1 will be: I wish I didn’t spend so much effing time on Facebook.

Read “Nurse reveals the top 5 regrets people make on their deathbed” »

Bene, you see, despite all its “experimental school” posturing, was one of those institutions that put students in groups (sections) based on their, well, “performance.” The 4th graders at that point had three sections with about 30 or so students each: the smart section, the average section, and the section for thugs and misfits. Us six “smartest of the smart” 3rd graders, of course, were moved to the next immediate logical section — yup, we were offered up as virgin sacrifices to the volcano of really big-assed bad boys.

OK, it wasn’t that bad. True, the class was made up mostly of boys — the biggest and the baddest of the kids a full year older than us — but not only did we manage to get along great with these guys, being with them for a few years frankly was what probably made the whole school thing really worth it for the sacrificial six, a school-sanctioned experience we’d really be hard-pressed to duplicate anywhere today — not to mention that it’s given me tons of stuff to write about.

Anyway, needless to say, us six became instant teacher’s pets. And I, the pet among pets. It’s not like I sought the position out, as some of my academic rivals (well, one in particular, that brilliant militant asshole I mentioned in this post) liked to accuse me of — I just went about doing my work. And when teachers would then ask me to do extra things beyond the scope of the curriculum, saying “Well, ma’am, you know where you can shove it” wasn’t exactly an option.

Well, at English class the first school day of August (our school year starts in June), our teacher dropped a bombshell on our linguistic laps: “August is English-speaking month,” she announced. “Learning to speak English well is very important. So, for the whole month of August, we will speak only English in school.”

Now, I don’t know if they still do that sort of thing today. I would, in fact, bet against it, considering some of the weird and dumb pro-Filipino language things I’ve heard the school system try to argue for — maybe even implement — through the years since I left. But hey, this was 1975. This stuff flew back then. But our teacher wasn’t finished.

“To make sure you all speak English this month,” she continued, “you will be fined 10 centavos for every Tagalog word you are heard saying on school grounds.”

Hey, 10 centavos wasn’t chump change back in 75, least of all to 9 and 10-year-olds.

Now for the two sentences guaranteed to make any kid a social pariah instantly: “To keep track of infractions, there will be secret police among you. Eldon, please see me after class.”

Oholymotherofg… sheesh. To this day I’m still at a loss for words.

Great fun was had by one and all. Daniel made out particularly well in the birthday loot department. I’ll spare you the list save for one particular item: I’m a T. Rex, a Little Golden Book! Forget the T. Rex part, although lordie knows I’d been saturating him with dinosaur-o-bilia way before he could figure out a pterodactyl’s a pterosaur, not a dinosaur. No, what’s got me all excited is that it’s a Little Golden Book! I had those growing up!

I had three of them, to be exact. But more on those details later. I hadn’t seen a Little Golden Book in ages! And you know what, they look just like I remember them: the same dimensions; the same heavy cardboard cover; the same gold foil spine; the same retro back cover illustrations. This was pretty cool! I peeked behind the front cover — yup, there it was, the same old open-book illustration in the middle, with the words “This Little Golden Book belongs to” heading on top of it. Ah, seeing that sure brings back some interesting memories.

You see, my father drummed it into my head very early in life to never ever ever ever ever write in books. Never. Ever. Not even in those Little Golden Books inside covers, where I argued it clearly showed I was supposed to write my name down. Nope, not as far as my Dad was concerned.

I had three of those thin Little Golden Books. I don’t really remember their titles now, but I could swear one of them was Three Little Kittens Lost Their Mittens. Doesn’t matter, but there’s absolutely no doubt in my head that then I knew exactly what they were and whose they were: MINE. Even if my name wasn’t on the inside front covers.

Back in the day, I took to carrying those Little Golden Books around with the five comic books I owned (one Batman, one Superman, one Justice League of America, one Supergirl — don’t ask — and one Sgt. Rock) in the coolest box in the world: the box my Superman pajamas came in. That box must have been a bit over two inches thick, about a foot wide, and over a foot-and-a-half long — just the perfect size for carrying my comic book and Little Golden Books collection, and then some.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. This story should start back in the middle of 1972, just a bit before I turned 6, when a little “experimental” private school, Benedictine Abbey School, opened its doors to three classes with something like 30 kids each: one Kindergarten class, and two Preps (the year after Kindergarten and before the first grade; I have no idea if the country still uses the same grade level structure today).

The school was built in the town of Alabang, what was then considered a pretty remote and, well, empty part of the metropolitan Manila area (I don’t believe that “Metro Manila” was formally established until 1975, when President Ferdinand Marcos also declared that his wife, Imelda, was going to be its governor). A lot of residential development was going on in Alabang and its surrounding towns and cities, like in Las Piñas, where my parents moved us to in 1969.

I think Bene (as we students ended up fondly calling the school) was the first “elite private school” for the area’s young but fast-growing population. It was considered experimental for a number of reasons that I can remember:

• Although Catholic (in the Philippines, what wasn’t?), it was co-ed, something that would serve me well in later years, but again I’m getting way ahead of myself. Heck if I know if it was the first, but it sure wasn’t common then.

• It had “no walls” and “no desks.” Supposedly at the forefront of the latest ideas in education for the era (I guess), the school’s first building had some cool beehive-cluster design thing going for it — each classroom was like a huge hexagon, and the building’s classrooms and other areas were interconnected to each other accordingly, surrounding a central hexagonal hub or area. As you can imagine, the building looked nothing like a traditional structure. And it had no walls in between classrooms. Instead, there were movable partitions which could be removed to create one large open space easily on demand.

Instead of desks, they had hexagon tables that sat six. Actually, they had two half-hexagon tables, but they were usually laid out paired together as hexagons.

Now that I’m thinking about it, it’d be cool if I could get my hands on some of those tables and chairs for my own kids — they were really well built. Made of wood, very sturdy and balanced looking, in just the right dimensions for the age group, that first batch of school furniture came in three colors– blue (Kindergarten, where my sister was), yellow (Prep, this was my classroom’s furniture) and red (Prep class #2). The last time I visited the school was 16 years later, and believe me, some if not all of that furniture was still there.

• They did not use traditional number grading. Instead, they used a letter-coded system and not ABCDF either. I think, from what I can remember from my first report card, there were only four letters in the initial grading code: VS (Very Satisfactory), S (Satisfactory), I (Improving) and NI (Needs Improvement). An I in the grade letter code was the kiss of death, it looked like, but supposedly not “discouraging” like regular number grades. Uh-huh. On the other hand, maybe they’re right, since the only I-grade I got in my first report card was for “Conduct,” and I really couldn’t have cared less.

Back to the furniture: The rest of the classroom had more non-traditional design elements as well. Such as big colorful wooden stacking cubes, open in the front and back. They were often used as large shelving, but also occasionally cleared out so we kids could play, climbing and crawling through them, etc. etc. etc.

Neat cubes, those were. Supposedly movable, rearrangeable and stackable, but this was before the era of plastics and synthetic materials, at least in the Philippines. Which probably explains why the tables and chairs I mentioned earlier lasted at least 16 years despite heavy abuse from children. And which also explains why 6yo me couldn’t move those dang heavy large wooden shelves/cubes around myself.

And I did try. You know why I know? Because at some point before Christmas, I was playing around those cubes, and for whatever reason, I purposely dropped one of my Little Golden Books in between two cubes. For whatever reason, I dropped a second one in there, and then another. Then I couldn’t get the dang things out. Couldn’t move the cubes. Then, for whatever reason (I guess I have to use that a lot to explain my behavior at that age), I figured I’d just leave and try again the following day. That was a todo list item that, you can probably guess, I ended up completely forgetting.

Here’s why I know this happened some time before Christmas: I had a big precocious crush on a girl in my sister’s blue furnitured Kindergarten class named Trixie (not her real name, because I’m dead sure if she reads this and it happens to have her not-exactly-unknown-to-everyone-in-our-batches name, she’ll go apeshit). And I had to go give her a big precocious kiss on the lips, something she never forgave me for, by the way, which ruined my chances with her forever and ever. The teachers thought this was the cutest thing in the world — I tended to bring that kind of thing out of teachers — and, get this, they paired Trixie and me for the lead roles in the upcoming Christmas Nativity play. Yup, I was Joseph the Carpenter, and poor cornered Trixie was the Virgin Mary, parents of the heavy newborn baby Jesus (solid wood, no plastic ones yet either I guess).

The Nativity play was held at night, on the last school day of the year before Christmas break. It was a big party, and that one in particular was kind of a big deal — my school happened to be the latest sibling of a very large and very well established Benedictine college in the Philippines. So, there were more than the usual number of robed Benedictine monks roaming around. Even more visually-memorable: There was a mini-flood of nuns, from our sister all-girls’ college, all excited and a twitter about the event — I guess taking nun vows does not render one immune from attacks of “Awwww” upon seeing 5-and-6-year-olds in Biblical costume and black-markered beards. But the most interesting, probably unbelievable, part? One of the nuns was my father’s aunt, Sister Mercedes Sarte.

Old large family and landowners, the original Sartes. And like all older established land-owning families in the country, the kids’ futures all seemed to be predestined and distributed evenly among all the various important and influential segments of society. There were the ones sent to study law and prepped to be politicians. Military. And there were the doctors. The academics and educators. And the business people (land-owning farmers, really, if you think about it). And then, usually the youngest ones who missed out on all the good assignments, those were sent to the Catholic Church. My grandfather’s generation, I guess the religion detail went to Mercedes, who was next to the if not the youngest of the siblings.

Well, she was there that night of December 1972, and Dad was spending a lot of time after the play chatting with her. So much so that my sister and I (she was the Christmas Angel in the play) wandered off to the school Library.

That’s what the teachers called it, anyway, the “Library.” Didn’t look like much of one — that first year, there weren’t even bookshelves; instead they had what looked like primary color-painted wooden newsstand magazine racks, just a few of them set up not too far from the colorful cube/shelves. The school probably didn’t have much of a book collection yet that first year to bother futzing around with the library decor. What it did have, however, I discovered that night, was my Little Golden Books collection. There they were, my three Little Golden Books, spread out evenly and prominently displayed on the top magazine rack!

There were a few other kids at the Library too. I don’t remember who they were, but at least one of them was a true play cast member, costumed and all, as opposed to the no-role-and-little-more-than-just-decor background singers, who had to do really nothing more than just bathe and show up and yet they still got credit for being part of the play. Now tell me, is that really fair? Anyway, the costumed kid — I think he was one of the shepherds — was reaching for one of my Little Golden Books.

No big deal. I just did what every sensible 6yo would have done in that situation: I took my books and proceeded to walk away. Well, tried to anyway — the damn shepherd wouldn’t let go of my book. That’s when the proverbial shit hit the fan.

Now try and picture this scene: A melee with high-pitched 5-and-6-year-olds, apparently around a tug-of-war over a book between a Biblical shepherd vs. Joseph the Carpenter and the Christmas Angel. Not only had a few parents and teachers rushed over to the commotion, a small horde of nuns had joined in the confusion too. All of them asking questions. Really couldn’t tell you what they were saying, or what it all really looked like, frankly, since I was right in the thick of things.

They eventually managed to get the shepherd and Joseph the Carpenter apart, of course. That’s when the serious “official” interrogation started. The shepherd immediately began bawling that I just started taking the book away — that’s when all eyes fell on me. Interestingly enough, the teachers deferred to my father for my cross-examination.
He knelt down to my eye-level. That’s when I began telling him, with Sister Mercedes hovering over his shoulder, all about the Little Golden Books and my comics collection in the Superman pajama box and the cubes/shelves and how my sister and I found my books again in the library (although I’m sure she had no idea — probably never did — about what the heck was going on) and how I don’t see what the big deal was all about since I’m just taking what’s mine anyway.

In the blink of an eye, that was when — and this was the first time and probably the only time I ever saw it happen in my life — Dad got deftly and quickly “pushed aside.” Sister Mercedes took control and took over the questioning. “Are you sure these are your books?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Why are you sure they’re you’re books?”

“Because they’re mine.” Duh.

“Is your name written on them?”

“No.”

“Then how can you be sure they’re your books?”

“Because they’re mine.” Double duh.

“Sorry, but unless you can prove they’re your books, you have to leave them here.”

I looked over at my Dad standing behind Sister Mercedes, and I actually saw him nodding his head in agreement. I’m pretty darn sure at that point I was thinking something along the lines of, “You dipshit. You told me not to write my goddamn name in the effing books!”
I literally remember a whole bunch of things zooming through my head that split second after I realized I couldn’t reason or argue my way into getting my books back. Actually, it was more the realization that, for chrissakes, how in everything that was good and holy could I possibly win an argument against a damn nun.

BAM! That’s when I also realized something else. But I wasn’t saying anything as I was figuring all this out. I’m sure Sister Mercedes concluded that my silence meant I was close to defeat. She went in for the kill.

“So, can you prove they’re your books, Eldon?”

“No.”

“That means you’ll have to leave them here.”

“OK.”

I put my Little Golden Books back on the newsstand. A smug smile crossed the Sister’s face, the same smug smile I’ve come to recognize on every adult when they think they just won one over a child and that the matter, whatever it was, was settled.

The incident seemingly forgotten just as quickly as it ignited, the adults went back to whatever it was they were doing. The shepherd and his crew were gone, probably dragged off quickly by their parents while I was being Guantanamo’d by the ladies from the Inquisition. My sister no doubt bored by the whole scene was off playing somewhere under the watchful eye of her nanny, who technically was supposed to be watching me too, but I was used to finding myself usually being left alone to do my own thing.

Yeah, alone doing my own thing. Which in this case was moving my Little Golden Books and hiding them behind other bigger books on the Library newsstand.

My last realization: Although I was in the right, no way in hell was I going to win the battle now, butting heads with the adults. Especially the holy ones. But out of sight out of mind, in essence, so they’d forget all about this pretty quickly. What then was stopping me from coming back and taking my books later? It couldn’t have been stealing because they were my goddamn books anyway.

Looking back now, I’m a bit taken aback that my 6yo self managed to do all those situational, even moral, calculations in that few moments after being, well, checkmated. Actually, not that I had managed it, frankly, but that my memory is quite clear that the whole thing was pretty gosh-darned effortless. Kinda scary, in a sense. Making a mental note now to remember the following as I work at guiding my now 3yo boy and 7mo girls through life: Tread carefully when dealing with their developing brains, because really, age doesn’t matter with what their brains may really be capable of.

I’ll leave you with two more truths that should cap this story nicely.

The first is that when I first realized that I could hide the books and come back later to reclaim them, I knew full well that that would be at least a couple of weeks later, when school resumed in 1973, after the Christmas break. And that’s exactly what happened: I walked to the Library and got my Little Golden Books from behind the bigger books concealing them. I took them to a table to read, in full view of a few people. Dum de dum de dum normal. Eventually the people left, which is when the books somehow slid into my bag. Problem solved. So, there it is, “The Great 1973 Little Golden Books Caper.” Take that, smug Sister Mercedes… try to manage me, will you…

The second thing: When I got my Little Golden Books home, I still didn’t write my name in them. To this day, I can’t get myself to write anything on books. Textbooks don’t count, of course, but go figure.

Of course I know what she’s referring to. I guess it’s just something of a pet peeve of mine when a) tools are depicted as the culprits, not humans, and b) wordsmiths try to be clever, but end up being technically misleading.

Very simply: A pencil’s technology — very very old tech, but tech nonetheless. Hint to that article’s author: Use “high technology” maybe, or maybe just abandon the idea altogether, because tools are only as effective as our ability to understand them and apply that understanding. Misuse a tool or rely on an unreliable one — that’s really on us, is it not?

Take good old pencil technology — we had to learn to not put too much pressure on it when we write (else the lead may break, Grasshopper!), and to have something sharp handy for when the lead inevitably breaks or wears down, or what we’ll be left with will be nothing more than a damn stick with a smudgy tip. So, where does skepticism even come into play in any of this?

Anyway, just had to get that little bothersome thing out of my system so my world can start spinning again. Resume.

Absolutely meaningless case in point: Twitter users know that tools are available to make a Twitter account automatically respond with a DM (direct message) to all new follows. The “how to make money on the Net” crowd has obviously taken a liking to this technology; although they are far from the only people using these auto DMs, they are the most visible since they are the most irritating (see “junk mail”).

This, of course, meant I had to join in the fun too. I set up an auto DM sent to all new followers that pokes fun at the whole thing. The short message has actually been consistently very well received, so much so that I now use it as the new follower auto DM for all my various Twitter accounts (braintropolis, wordpreneur, eldonsarte, etc.), at least one of which you’ll have to follow to see said message.

Anyway, a few months after I first started using this auto DM, someone actually replied, “You stole this from a t-shirt!” Heck if I knew this woman from Tonya Harding — she followed my Twitter account — and as far as unsolicited first impressions went, this really wasn’t too promising, but I replied, “Um, no, that came from my head. But thanks for the tip that there’s a market for this stuff!”

That set her off (surprise!). Received a number of Twitter DMs from her on the subject, all revolving around my supposed theft of this short (160 characters or less, remember!) message, how I plagiarized the t-shirt, how I need to do this and that and blah blah blah. She wasn’t even indicating or implying that it was her “property” that was supposedly infringed upon! Simple reply from me: “You’re nuts. Bye.” Then I blocked her (well, set up my Twitter client to block me from seeing anything from her; couldn’t care less whether she gets my tweets or not).

No big deal as far as “weird online incidents” go, something I think deserves no more than a little dusty corner of my memory, probably never to be pulled out again. Except that every few months or so, someone new DMs me something similar. It’s not always t-shirts — sometimes it’s a movie line (and movies I’ve never seen, mind you), or a song, or, the double-take champ so far, a tattoo. Again, I know none of these folks, and by the same token, none of them really know me.

Which leads to this question: Why automatically assume theft? In the span of less than a minute, for instance, it’s not like I can’t easily come up with three very plausible scenarios considering all the unknowns:

1. I sold the line to others for commercial use. (Why the heck not?)

2. They stole the line from me. (Again, why the heck not? Why was I the accused, not the commercial entity?)

3. We came up with our respective lines independently. (There are 6 billion people in the world; even if only 1/6 of that is affected by the same idea stimulus, that’s a thousand “one in a million” ideas!)

OK, enough of that example. For the record, I didn’t steal the line. But it’s impossible for me to know if it’s an Eldon Sarte original, or — more likely, no doubt — has been influenced by something else out there my psyche managed to get itself exposed to. The line matches my humor, and sounds like something I would say/come up with. Which would also explain why it’s in my head if I saw it or something like it elsewhere. At the end of the day, some people really need to get lives I think, folks — these were just Twitter auto-DMs!

Now for the next example, not quite as pathetic as the previous example, but probably more intellectually interesting. I posted the following “quote” (an ancient Japanese proverb) once as my Facebook status. And prior to that, many years ago, I liked using it on occasion as an email/ezine signature:

The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour.

Well, you may find it interesting to note that every single response and comment I got from that proverb was based on the assumption that “the conduct of one hour” was a negative act.

Yeah, that negative scenario obviously works very well with the proverb (hey, Arnold Schwarzenegger, how’s that rep of a thousand years of yours starting to look now after an hour — probably closer to just fifteen minutes, right? — with your “staffer”?).

However, what’s stopping us from reading good conduct into this instead?

Exactly. Funny how our minds work, huh?

I’m not even sure, in fact, when this actually took place. It was probably the week after Christmas 1981, which places me at 15yo and still in high school, living in a suburb of Metro Manila. It was the lull between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, I think, a time when the country for the most part took at least a week-long break from working too hard, save maybe for guys like my father who ran their own businesses and bitched that time is money ergo holidays cost them money, so you can imagine what kind of mood that kind of week-long break put him in, at least during the workday. Anyway, no breaks for him, so he was still on the same work schedule that week, essentially forcing a small core group of his employees to work that week along with him too. Me? Bored out of my skull at home.

Since Metro Manila still wasn’t overrun by shopping malls then like it is now, the closest good shopping hang out was Makati, the business district, where Dad’s offices were. So I’d taken to occasionally hitching a ride with him in the morning, wasting time doing whatever in Makati alone (I guess I was weird that way), then call Dad’s office so he could send a chauffeur to pick me up and drive me home. The chauffeur thing sounds ritzy rich, but for low-income Philippines where cheap labor isn’t exactly scarce, having one for the middle classes on up is very common.

Well, this was way before cell phones. So my M.O. then when I was ready to go home was to walk to the second floor of the old small Tesoro’s building, which if memory serves was in between the huge (for then) Makati ShoeMart department store and the sprawling QUAD shopping mall complex. Tesoro’s was (maybe still is) an upscale Philippine arts and crafts and souvenirs shop – aka tourist trap – which filled up much of the building; leftover office spaces were rented out to a bunch of tailors and custom dress shops who, as you’ve probably guessed, also catered to mostly tourists. Anyway, Dad co-owned one of those tailoring shops, The Corporate Man, one of his earliest business ventures (he must have been in his 20s). So, I’d go to Corporate Man, ask to use the phone to call Dad, then wait around for the driver and car to show up.

Well, that day my pop’s secretary informed me that Dad’s chauffeur, Mang Galing (Mang = Mister and Galing = Very Skilled, but that really was his surname) was on an errand, and it would probably take at least an hour before he could get to me. I wasn’t dumb – “at least an hour” was more likely 2-3 hours – so I told her I’d just take public transportation home.

You see, there was no shortage of public transport. I don’t think I really need to explain why I would have preferred to be driven by a chauffeur in air-conditioned comfort versus taking public transportation, but at least I wasn’t above going that route, like some people I knew. Heck, I’d been getting around the area like that by myself since I was 12 or so, unbeknownst to my parents of course, since I technically was not allowed to be out on my own (OK, if you really want to get technical, I was supposed to be in school most of those times, but that’s for other stories).

Well, from where I was (ShoeMart Makati), there was a busy bus stop right in front where I could take a bus to the town of Alabang, where I could then transfer to a Jeepney (one of those cool wildly decorated open-air passenger “vans” with Jeep front ends) destined for the town of Zapote – the walled community or “village” where I lived was along the way. Or, I could wait for a bus that traversed the whole route – Makati to Alabang to Zapote – then I wouldn’t have to go through the hassle of transferring rides. Although they didn’t come by as often, I preferred to hold out and wait for one of them

There weren’t that many people at the bus stop. On a normal day, people usually stood around shoulder-to-shoulder, but there were only something like three women standing around that day, loaded with shopping bags, apparently after doing some post-Christmas shopping. I was the only guy, and holding nothing since I was doing nothing better than just hanging out. Traffic, although not too light, still wasn’t as heavy as normal considering the “holidays.” This also meant that there weren’t that many buses, a longer wait in-between each showing up. Dang. It looked like I was going to have to transfer at Alabang.

Eventually a bus arrived, and sure enough, it only went as far as Alabang. It was a normal-sized bus for the Philippines, which is about half-the length of the buses we’re used to in the States. I let one woman loaded with bags through ahead of me. She wasn’t moving too fast though, then I saw why: She was trying to squeeze her way past a number boxes piled in front around the driver and partly blocking the sole door. On top of the box at the very front sat a policeman – I’m not sure now if he was Philippine Constabulary, but I think he was – and he and the driver were chatting and laughing and smoking cigarettes (they could do that in buses then).

I had one foot on the first step and halfway up the bus, enough to see that the bus only had about half a dozen passengers. The laughing, smoking cop had his hand out, ready to help me on-board, when right behind at that exact moment a Makati-Alabang-Zapote bus pulled up. I waved the cop’s help off and thanked him, then jumped off. I wouldn’t be surprised if I had skipped my way to the other bus, giddy over my good fortune.

Both buses pulled out at the same time, the bus with the cop ahead of us. The bus with the cop pulled over to pick up another passenger at a smaller bus stop, right before the South Superhighway that would take us to Alabang. There were no other people waiting at the stop, so my bus just passed and continued on its merry way.

Uneventful trip, and I don’t really remember much about the rest of the day.  My last memory of that day’s kind of fuzzy – I was asleep, after all. There was a commotion outside my bedroom, not too loud, but abnormal and disruptive enough to rouse me. Dad just got home. My bedroom door opened and he entered in a rush. “What’s going on, Dad?” He stopped, looked at me, then visibly deflated. “Nothing son. Goodnight. Go back to sleep.” He kissed me on the forehead, and closed my door behind him as he left.

I was up before he was the next morning. I’m pretty sure it was a work day, for him and the core group of employees trying to please and impress him anyway. He didn’t sleep much, a practice I’d end up evolving to a few years later (as opposed to “adopting” since it just seemed to happen and wasn’t on purpose). But in my last few years of high school, as his businesses seemed to really start taking off, he seemed to be getting home later and later every night, so finding myself getting up before very-disciplined-let’s-exercise-before-the-sun-goes-up him was becoming more commonplace. I picked up the bag of fresh and warm pandesal on the breakfast table and the newspaper folded on top of my Dad’s plate and proceeded to the den – for some reason the natural light seemed much brighter in there, and the couch was comfy to boot – to read the comics section and pig out on the bread.

Dad got up about 30 minutes later. I think there were a dozen pandesals in the brown paper bag, but I never bothered to count. I did, however, make sure to leave at least two for my pop ever since he went ballistic on me one Saturday morning when he woke up to the bread’s appetizing aroma and found out I had eaten it all. After our greetings that morning, he picked up the bread and the ignored front sections of the newspaper and sat on the window bench next to my couch. Now that I think about it, I just realized we really weren’t coffee drinkers then (now I am, thanks to working at an office, maybe something for another post).

“So, Dad,” I asked, “what was that all about?”

“What was what?”

“Last night…?”

“Oh, that, I was making sure you were alive. I didn’t believe Jesus [the houseboy] and had to see for myself.”

“I guess something happened somewhere…?”

I didn’t have to ask why he didn’t just call the house – we didn’t have a phone. No one but one household that I knew of in the whole village had a phone, and this is something I will definitely write about later.

“You and your comics,” Dad said, as he just shook his head. “Here, look at this,” he added, as he tossed the front section of the paper onto my lap.

I don’t remember the actual headline, and no picture accompanied the smallish single column news item on the side, but the news was pretty clear: a bus it seemed had caught fire on the South Superhighway. The driver apparently pulled over to the right then stopped the bus up against the highway’s chain link fence, blocking the only door and exit. All the passenger windows had metal bars. Everybody perished.

Now is a good time for you to know that New Year’s Eve in the Philippines was a whole night of personal firecrackers and pyrotechnics, none of this “We all sat outside on a picnic blanket as we enjoyed the warm night and the beautiful fireworks display” stuff. Walking anywhere New Year’s Eve in the village was so very not recommended. Not that you couldn’t tell you were approaching people on the sidewalk playing with firecrackers – it’s that not all firecrackers were of the light and toss variety. Some were the type that you put in the middle of the street and you lit with a mosquito coil or cigarette right before you ran as if Satan were chasing you. Usually those were the bigger boom types to boot. And those boomers didn’t always go off, and since it’s night and dark, no one really tried to go looking for the duds blindly and just left them there for morning… and sometimes, when those duds got accidentally touched or kicked, a little smoldering spark would get a fresh whiff of oxygen and reignite the now shortened fuse, and… You get the picture. This is really why our parents kept us boys from scavenging the streets the next morning looking for firecrackers that did not explode. Not that that stopped us. But I digress…

…anyway, all those explosives were absolutely, positively illegal. Particularly in Martial Law Philippines (this was the Ferdinand Marcos era, remember). Not that that really stopped us from using the stuff – I think the only New Year’s Eve without firecrackers I remember was back in 72, the first year of Martial Law which became law on September 21 of that year, and I remember cars driving around the village with nothing more than cans tied to their bumpers being dragged behind them as the drivers and passengers hooted and hollered as they drove through the otherwise quiet streets. I guess that silly and sad can banging ended in later years when people realized, hey, this was New Year’s Eve, not a damn wedding. However, since firecrackers were still very much illegal, with the police making a show of raiding makeshift fireworks factories at least once every year for the newspapers, even though they were widely available, everyone made a big to do about smuggling the stuff here and there since at the end of the day, they still very much were really and truly illegal <wink> <wink>.

Well, the news item about the bus fire explained that preliminary investigations indicated the bus was apparently smuggling a hoard of firecrackers and pyrotechnics, and the contraband ignited. I do not remember any other details from the article — I wish I still had a copy – save for this: They had difficulty identifying the bodies, they were burned that badly, save for the fact that one of them was a policeman. I still think he was PC, probably the smuggler himself, or at least part of the team. But I’m just guessing.

“So you must have gone home before that accident,” my Dad said, “otherwise you would have seen that bus on fire on the highway, huh.”

That’s when I told him, “Dad, I was on that bus.” Although I told him what I told you, that I really wasn’t fully in, the guy paled (I’ve seen him paler, but he did pale) and went quiet.

I debated whether I should try to embellish the story, maybe worry my Dad even more, enough to get me my own car and chauffeur, or even better, allow me to get an illegal driver’s license like a few of my friends had. I decided the truth was just weird enough to do the trick.

It wasn’t. Shit.

In school, for example, every year they made us take those “standardized aptitude tests” I guess is what you call them, and every year — at least beginning with the year I started giving a futz and began peeking into those official-looking envelopes with the results and evaluations they told us to bring home to our parents after about a month after the tests — my “percentile rank” was 99+.

I privately took pride in that 99+, actually, since back then, grade school, I was in constant academic competition with two notable honors contenders: one was quite brilliant but also a militant asshole, and the other was the quintessential disciplined neat freak. Well, the militant kid always hated the aptitude test results — his always topped out at 99, and for about a week every year guaranteed, you could find him loudly dismissing the validity of aptitude tests to whoever he could get to listen. The neat freak, on the other hand, always seemed to produce scores of 86 or 87, and he in turn would go into a quiet depressed funk for that same post-results week, as if he weren’t quiet enough already. I on the other hand always played the “this shit’s no big deal it doesn’t matter” cool card. Man that really pissed off the militant kid big time.

I’ll spare you all the other similar examples from my school career and fast forward to the mid-90s, December 1995 to be exact, only a few days before Christmas. I had been dealing with constant severe headaches among other things. Diagnosis: brain tumor. Actually, they were pretty confident that it wasn’t a tumor but a cyst. An endodermal cyst, to be exact, about the size of a golfball and intertwined through the good old brain stem.

Long story short, they got it out and I survived, obviously. Four surgeries total — two “maintenance” ones of a few hours each, to put in a shunt to relieve the pressure from blocked brain fluid that had built up (cause of the massive headaches, apparently), and then another surgery later on to replace the original shunt when the damn thing just failed and stopped working for some reason. Then there were the two major brain surgeries — if memory serves, they averaged out to about 14 hours each. That’s just what everyone told me after, from the doctors and nurses to family and friends who hung around and waited in the hospital lobby and lounges. I was obviously knocked out through the procedures, so I guess I had the easy part in the play.

There really should have just been one major surgery — they came in behind the left ear and tried to scrape the growth out from there, attempting to avoid all the uber delicate and finicky brain stem nerves. Well, it worked — mostly. They had difficulty getting to the cyst, as you can imagine, and weren’t sure if they managed to get it all out. An MRI eventually confirmed their suspicions — they left the cyst capsule and sac, I think is what they called it, so it was still anchored and refilling with fluid and growing and, bottom line, they had to go in yet again to get it all out. But this time, through a back of the head no more futzing around direct through the brain stem route.

That last major surgery happened a few months later. In the meantime after the first major cut-dig-and-scrape, I forgot to mention, I had an extra hard time getting myself up and about from the trauma. For a bit more than a month, I was hospitalized. Knocked out for most of it, apparently, since I literally do not remember any of that month or so. A good thing, I guess, since apparently my lungs collapsed, I had to be intubated (and still have the serious-looking scars on my throat to show for it), and was generally not in a “I want to get up and out of here” kind of mood.

Clearly, I eventually got out of there. Except I kinda left the hearing in my left ear behind. Most people, they said, would get their hearing back completely after they recovered from that “enter behind the left ear” procedure, but a very few for some reason, never do. Well, I’m now stone deaf in my left ear.

Effing one percenter.

Zoom ahead a few months to the next major procedure, going straight for the gusto. As you can probably guess by now, the doctors were all, “Oh, there may be some minor nerve-related issues afterwards — most recover on their own, a few may need some therapy, a very few do experience and exhibit varying degrees of nerve damage, from mild to severe facial and ocular palsy, yada yada yada…”

Well, guess how Mr. One Percent ended up. Yup, they got the whole thing out — post-surgery MRIs show no damage and the surgeons slapping high-fives all around for textbook evidence of a job well done, while:

• I cannot move my eyes horizontally very much; they, in fact, point inwards severely (I am cross-eyed); the right one, in fact, isn’t even level with the horizon — although I can see with it and it is the sharper eye, when I use it, the combined double-vision and skewed horizon gets me all confused and screwed up, I’ve taken (and gotten used) to covering up the right eye and working only with the left one.

• I have a partially paralyzed throat; for the longest time, over 6 months, I wasn’t allowed to eat through my mouth, instead taking in my liquid diet (Ensure Plus) through a feeding tube sticking out of my tummy called a G-tube (for gastric tube); the three Ensure Plus flavors I remember were vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, with strawberry being my favorite since it smelled the best; those were my only meals for many months, at least until I successfully finished therapy that trained me to eat safely (enough) with a semi-paralyzed throat.

• And, here’s the big one as far as my ability to communicate effectively face-to-face is concerned: I have severe facial paralysis; I speak with a very bad lisp, but worse… I cannot smile.

And that is the long story behind why I don’t smile in pictures.

But back to the one percent thing. Get this: There was something so rare about my condition (or some aspect of it), that the doctors asked for — and I gave them — permission to be written up in a medical paper they had decided to write and try to get published. Allowed them to use my MRIs too. Last I heard, they did get it published.

On a related note, about a year after surgery, I got word that some young (-ish) surgeon was doing some interesting nerve grafting technique that could help me regain use of my facial muscles. Or at least some of them. So I went to see him. His technique: He would cut and route the nerves from one side of my tongue, grafting them over to the facial muscles (I don’t remember if they went to both sides or just one side of the face). Then, I would be retrained somehow to learn how to control my facial muscles with those tongue nerves. The remaining nerves on the untouched side of the tongue, on the other hand, then supposedly compensate for the relocated nerves, eventually bringing the tongue back to normal use. Of course, “A very small number of patients experience nerve damage and lose full use of their tongues…”

I’ve learned my Mr. One Percent lesson by now. My response? About as clean a version of “Eff that” as I could come up with in short order. And that’s now the standard party line: “Not a life-threatening condition you’re proposing serious surgery for? Eff that.”

So there you have it. Am I bummed all that happened? Hell yeah. It’s not like I don’t get reminded daily that hey, things just aren’t quite normal anymore Kemosabe. But it’s just one of those c’est la vie things that neither angers nor depresses me.

On top of which, it’s far from common knowledge that after my last surgery, I spent a number of weeks at a rehab hospital (in Mount Vernon, Virginia, I believe it was) that specialized in treating folks who’ve experienced traumatic brain injuries — accidents, strokes, brain surgeries, etc. Although no way no how did I want to be there — I can’t think of anything more depressing than to be around a whole bunch of other sick people! — I couldn’t help but keep my writer’s cap on to observe. For one thing, I noticed that there were a heck of a lot of cancer patients in there, clearly way more than half of the patient population. A few strokes here, a couple of car accident survivors there, but it was one cancerous brain tumor story after another as we were forced to tell our “how our asses ended up in here” tales to everybody else in those large group discussion circles I couldn’t escape from (I could barely move and was being pushed around in a wheelchair).

Well, from what I eventually learned about the disease, most if not all of those brain tumor patients I encountered at the Mt. Vernon rehab? Probably dead within a year or two. Me? My wife and I had a son who just turned 3 last week — here’s a picture of the two us together his second New Year’s Eve celebration, an image that pleases me no end, so much so that I’ve decided to start using it as my Braintropolis Twitter account‘s profile pic, and maybe elsewhere as well — and we also added twin girls to the family fold seven months ago.

Yeah, the medical issues were a bummer. But damn, it sure could have been oodles worse.

Huh?

My apologies. For the longest time, Braintropolis was a blog in search of a purpose. I thought I found it a number of months back when I decided to try making it an Utne Reader of sorts, regularly reprinting others’ blog posts and articles that I found worth reprinting for whatever reason.

Well, got bored with that one pretty quickly. Except for periodic bursts of activity, I never really could get myself committed and give too much of a futz about the whole thing. Traffic would roller coaster a bit along with each burst, but as expected, it all but dried up with this last really long spell (Net-wise anyway) of inactivity.

Nothing wrong with that blog publishing model, mind you — it just wasn’t something I was into tackling and focusing on on my lonesome (in fact, if you want to work with me on something like that and/or other blog or online publishing projects, let’s hook up).

What this means is that Braintropolis has been reinvented yet again. This time, likely for keeps, because unlike previous incarnations, this Braintropolis version is, well, all me.

You see, previous versions were little more than guesses on my part, really, on what readers would like to see — TRANSLATION: what I could make money on — whether the content strategy could hold my interest for an extended period or not.

Long story short, no, none of them really did hold my interest. And although they did modestly start achieving what I set out to do — monetize the gradually growing traffic — I just neglected taking them further due to nothing more than large pockets of time of no interest and activity.

Fast forward to now. After writing this post on my Wordpreneur blog, one where I went off on a substantial tangent from the topic at hand, I got reminded how much fun I have just doing and writing these “tangents” for no particular reason save mainly to get these thoughts, observations, conclusions, etc., just written down for posterity, maybe even just to take them out of my system, so to speak, so I can proceed on to the next thing free, clear and unencumbered by, well, all this tangential detritus.

So, I decided to start jotting these things down for the pure hedonistic joy of it. And I went looking for a place to put them when I realized, hell, all I’ve mainly been futzing around with all these years are how-to “blogs,” none that hold all this other stuff my fast aging brain seems to like spitting out for no apparent reason — basically, what blogs were designed for in the first place.

“Well then,” I said, looking at Braintropolis, “I’ll just take this thing back. It’s going nowhere anyway.” So here we are, with a repurposed Braintropolis, destined to hold nothing else but my head’s output.

That’s the plan for now, anyway. No idea where this is going to go. I guess we’ll find out. Scratch that — I guess I’ll find out. I suspect a lot of you won’t be hanging around to see how this develops. I guess I’ll find that out too.

That’s one interesting part about this “project” — I really don’t care if it appeals to a lot of people, or even if it appeals to any person really except me. Got other projects for mass consumption. Braintropolis is publicly accessible for anyone who feels like dropping by and checking it out, but at the end of the day, it’s just me, writing.

OK then. I’ve zapped all the articles I didn’t write from the site. I left the few that I did do. We’re off.

Those competitions, at least those that eventually worked their way to the nationals, always started at the “district” level, and back then, there was something like 5 or 6 schools in our district that always butted heads during those events. Thing was, my school was the only private one, and we pretty much won every single one of those events. Academic, athletic, it didn’t matter, we won them all.

We were treated and held separate from the pack to boot. That’s something I distinctly remember when I did the rounds in my pre- and early teens, duking it out in the math “quiz bees,” oratorical contests (English, since I pretty much sucked at Tagalog) and even politics — as student body president one year, my officers and I were shuttled off to meet up with student officers from all the other schools, and we then elected officers for the district; guess who got the presidency, or all the top spots on the roster for that matter. I remember walking into loud, boisterous rooms for those events and meetings, dragging along my “entourage,” and everyone would automatically quiet down and stare as we took our assigned spots. Now that I think about it, it was kind of eerie weird.

(All that changed for me when I discovered girls and, let’s call them “non-school pleasures,” but I digress.)

That was the district academic scene. I don’t remember many of them being held at my school; the athletic meets, however, those were always on our turf for one very simple reason: We were the only one with the facilities. Football field, basketball court, track… you know, the basics. The public schools could barely get the funds to pay for stuff like classrooms and books; I honestly do not know where districts with nothing but public schools actually held their athletic events.

Interestingly enough, it was at one of these athletic events, not in academics, where the value and benefit of having a good education became absolutely, positively crystal clear to 14-year-old me.

It was a track-and-field meet. My friends and I were walking around the field, checking out all the various events that were occurring simultaneously. One of my friends said his brother, let’s call him Dirk, was jumping. He meant the high jump. So we walked over to the corner of the field where they were holding the event.

Dirk was two years older than we were, a senior at the school. The guy fancied himself an athlete, and he most certainly was. Special, however, he wasn’t. I knew it. Heck, Dirk knew it. What I didn’t know was that he jumped high enough to represent the school, but there he was, warming up next to the high bar.

It was the guy next to Dirk, however, the guy that was doing some practice jumps over the bar, that caught my attention. It was immediately apparent that he was the top contender from the other schools. He looked like he was a head taller than Dirk. More muscular. But more importantly, he was clearing that bar like it was just resting on the ground by his feet. That guy could jump! I just stared in amazement at his practice leaps as he just went straight up and over, his whole upper torso vertical and, well, like he was just sitting and floating in the air as he pulled his legs and feet up slightly to clear. He was jaw-dropping impressive.

After that guy finished with his practice and returned to his coach’s side, Dirk took a few practie jumps of his own. Totally different. Dirk was doing the Fosbury Flop — you know, that head first backward jump that just slithers over the bar that we see everyone do at the Olympics. My school chums and I weren’t impressed by that — it’s what they were teaching us to do in PE (what Americans call Gym) class — and we were even less impressed by the fact that no way no how did Dirk’s vertical leap even come close to that other guy’s.

Dangit. One less gold medal for our school. But it was pretty obvious that among the high jumpers, the medal belonged to that other guy, the one I started calling Luke (Skywalker, get it?).

Fast forward: After a few rounds, the field was down to Dirk and Luke. The bar still hadn’t gone up too much from where it was when the competition began, but already all the other competitors — all jumping vertically like Luke — were out. Luke had absolutely no difficulty and was starting to look really assured that he was going to walk away with the gold. Dirk was harder to read as he flop flop flopped around from one bar height to the next, but he was still in the game.

Move ahead about 5 or 6 jumps. Luke still looked like he hadn’t broken a sweat, despite the bar now being substantially higher. As the bar inched upward, he would just raise and tuck his legs in more with each jump. Dirk, on the other hand, although not struggling, looked like he was in the middle of a work out, expending considerable physical effort with every attempt. And he was barely clearing the bar each time. But he was clearing it.

Frankly, it was getting boring and anticlimactic, watching those two. Luke was just too, well, strong and naturally talented, Dirk little more than technique.

The bar inched up yet again, and Luke stepped back a few short yards, taking off powerfully then — BOOM! — launching himself fully way above the bar, pulling up and tucking in his legs and — thoomp — landing on his feet in the cushion, the bar bouncing softly on the cushion behind him. He didn’t clear the bar!

Luke looked embarrassed but was smiling and unperturbed. He still had a couple more tries to go. After consulting with his coach a bit, he tried again… and brought the bar to the cushion with him yet again. He lost his smile, the agitation and concern thick over him and his coach as they conferenced. His focus was deadly serious when he made his last attempt, but that was nothing compared to the look of utter disappointment and pain on his face when he brought the bar down with him one last time. He just couldn’t tuck his legs in that extra half-inch he needed to get his feet to clear the thing.

It took Dirk all of one jump to do the same height. Barely — no part of him even came close to the heights Luke reached effortlessly — but he contorted and writhed and flowed his head, body and legs up and over that bar without touching it… and won the gold.

Click! Lesson learned. Can you imagine what Luke could have achieved, the heights he really could have reached, had he gone to my school?

Now that I have a 2-year-old boy to raise, I wanted to write this all down for posterity. Because if the kid’s anything like me, the inevitable day will come when, after being “directed” to focus his efforts on not only getting into school, but the right school, he’ll give me the old teenage refrain: “Talent’s all I need” or “That school’s good enogh” blah blah blah blah blah.

Not that he’ll be buying any of my true story, but I’ll be able to turn to my wife guilt-free and say, “Hey, I tried. What’s for dinner?”