Hard Tests..Radiography Level II

Basically i am challenging 2 years worth of training, hours and testing by cramming everything in at once and then taking a rediculously hard test. The exam that I took and then recently got my marks back on (after an Excruciating 3 week wait) had a 90% failure rate…yeeaaaaaah. thats a 10% pass rate….that means that only, on average, 10 out of every 100 times the test is taken, is it passed.

I was pretty shaky on how i felt about it…pretty shaky. I worked So hard..i have been studying cue cards and taking practice tests and memorizing definitions and math equations since the beginning of January. I got into the exam and i was like “oh crap”. The test was SO hard, the questions were SO confusing, and there were math questions with equations that i had Never even heard of before..and i have memorized Tons of equations.

I phoned the guy up in Ottowa…he checked his computer, and told me “Mr. Barkey, you have successfully passed all three parts of the Written Examination, congratulations”

I couldnt believe it, i was so overwhelmed and relieved and surprised that it quickly became a moment that i wont forget, characterized by a sweeping blanket of intense emotions. I was so released from stress that it just flooded out of me in waves of excitement! I have worked so hard, and been blessed by so much prayer support that i am just extremely grateful to have this part of the certification process behind me and now i prepare for the last step, the Practical Exam.

It is a 2 days exam and I get three attempts at the Practical Exam. Since i have no material to study, i am planning on going into the first exam with the mindset of learning as much as i can in the first go around…and hopefully passing as many of the 7 parts as possible. Im pretty nervous about it. the exam is mid august..and because they are SO backed up, i cant rewrite until the end of October…STRESScase!

math test

its super fun writing a math test after ZERO hours of sleep. My reasoning and deduction skills were a bit slow..but I managed to get a 14 out of 15 so im happy about that. It wasn’t actually too difficult of a test..we were taught way more than we were tested on, so that was nice.

the foot thing…fun times. Just like last time, after sitting in the hospital for 7 hours..my symptoms dissappated and by the time a doctor came around to check on me, they were gone..just like last time. So he said “i have no idea…but it seems to have fixed itself”. This wouldn’t be a big deal except for the fact that absolutly nothing brought it on (I was laying in bed) and that 2 yrs and 4 months ago the exact same thing happened while i was sitting on a couch and got worse while washing some dishes. The clinic doctor said he had no idea and then sent me to a hospital where the symptoms dissappeared before i saw a doctor. So so far only the walk in clinic doctor has seen anything. The symptoms are similar to a blood clot, except that it doesnt progress into a deep vein thing..and they are similar to gout except its on the wrong part of my foot (top, outside part…instead of running up from big toe)

so after a sleepless night in the hospital i got no answers..but at least i was  a little better prepared for my math test than the doctors were for my foot.

wow, it hurts.

It is 3:30 AM and i think i am having my second Gout attack. I went to bed at 11 PM with zero pain in my foot…but as i started to drift off the pain got worse and worse. Right now it is a throbbing pain that is almost impossible to walk on, and its progressively getting worse.

I had this happen once before. I went to a medical clinic..then got sent to the hospital..and by the time Canada’s wonderful health care system decided to see my the symptoms had dissappeared as quickly as they came. So here i sit…counting down the hours until i have to be at an extremely hard course in the morning…probably on zero hours of sleep. To make matters worse i cant drink coffee because it says that it might make it worse.

awesome. ever wonder at God’s timing?

im not too stressed because this has happened once before, about 2 years ago..and even though it technically went undiagnosed that time…im pretty sure its the same thing right now. crazy painful. no chance of sleeping. can’t really walk. pray for mental energy tomorrow..and an easier day so that i can absorb more info. i have my Math Test today (friday morning)..this should be interesting.

 

my big scary Radiography course

well today i started my Level II Radiography course..my last stage of training. So far i have been fortunate and i have done well on the courses…but the other courses didnt boast a 90% failure rate. They changed the grading scale less than a year ago..and since that time the failure rate has risen by 230%…i know…seems a little crazy.

Today was easy..but thats cause it was all review…tomorrow is some more math fun..then on Friday morning i have my First Test that i have to pass to get my math certification…should be a blast. Then i have four days of joy called Materials & Processing..then a test on that..probably on Tuesday morning, then i get another cute little certificate…then i have a couple weeks on Radiography…then i take a nice big test to get my last certificate.

Then comes the fun..the gov’t exams. I have to pass a written exam, and then a practical exam. The waiting period is typically 2-3 months to get in to take the practical exam. That is Way too long. Its so easy to forget things between now and then…so i would appreciate prayer that not only do i pass the course certificate exams, but also that somehow i would find my way into a practical exam in the near future..and then capitalize on it.

thanks for thoughts and prayers.

a big day for me.

My favorite soccer player is David Beckham. I have followed his career starting on the roster for Manchester United..followed by his transfer to Real Madrid of Spain and finally his move to the LA Galaxy. He has faced so much adversity throughout his career and he has maintained a calm cool that is to be envied. Because of his massive star power it seems that whenever a new coach comes into the organization he is playing for they use him as a pawn to set an example. They bench one of the greatest place kickers of all time. Twice in his career his managers have gone so far as to say that he will never play for their squad again, and twice they have had to swallow their shorts an beg him back onto the roster.  He isnt a flashy player with brilliant speed. He doesnt shoot his mouth off and proclaim his greatness to anyone who will hear. He is a quiet footballer who has developed himself into an icon for his sport. He is the greatest sports icon of all time. I am not saying that he is the greatest athlete of all time, or even his sport. He is however the most widely recognized personality in the history of sport.

Tomorrow, for the first time in my life, I get to watch him play an exhibition game in Edmonton. I Am Pumped. I am going to enjoy Every Second of the game.

Losing a baby.

What a ridiculous term. Lose. We didn’t lose anything. Why do we minimalize the grieving process by putting Disney names to it? “Oh,..she passed”. No, passing is what you do when you are stuck behind a 94 year old sunday driver in no hurry to get home to watch the football game. Died. Dead. If we are so afraid of saying the word ‘Death’, then why don’t we just say it how it is?…I had something special in my life, now it is gone and there is a big gaping hole where that something used to be, and even though I am tough and strong I cry like a kid sometimes just remembering what used to be.

I thought that words like death were supposed to sum all that up in a shorter effort so that in the midst of grieving you could say what happened without have to sob through a big long paragraph description, but now apparently death just means that we lost something.

Fetuses die. Just because its supposedly a common thing doesn’t mean that its easier for me. ‘They’ say that one in four fetuses self abort for a vastly varied number of reasons. I guess that later on it can potentially be comforting to know that you aren’t the only one going through something, but at the time it sucks..and just because it happened to someone else doesn’t mean it sucks less this time.

“It gets easier”…no..it doesn’t. We decided not to tell anyone this time. Why go through what we went through last time. Last time we did everything right. We bought all the right books, we started kicking around great baby names and we started thinking about ways to baby proof our very ‘non baby ready’ home. We did it all right and it all turned out wrong.

This time we took the test, then took it again, and then one more time just to be sure. Success. It was time to start moving forward again. No more dealing with feelings of being stuck in the mud with the world passing me by. After a very brief talk we agreed not to tell anyone. We wanted to wait until we were sure we were safe this time…we could wait until the sixth month right? So what if people thought Amanda was ‘filling out’ a bit. At least with no one knowing, we could control the excitement. We had no one to disappoint but ourselves this time.

I was working out of town when I got the phone call last week. “Its happening again”. No need to elaborate. When you have gone through it once, you just know when its happening again. It didn’t take long to realize that we needed friends around and that it was important to have family know what was going on. We really appreciate people praying for us and asking how we are doing. We had some good friends over this weekend who miscarried only a couple weeks ago, she said that nobody can ever really understand how to tell you that they are sorry for what you are going through unless you can see the same pain in their eyes. I agree, but I also appreciate it when people try their best to show that they are my friends and that they support us because you don’t always have to understand in order offer comfort and support.

Its with a heavy heart that I end this post. I feel that even though its understandable to try to stifle your excitement the second time around because you understand the possibilities of what could go wrong, its unfair to withhold any emotional attachment because of negative things that could happen. If you live your life wound up tight, worrying about what might go wrong, I think it will always be a struggle to fully enjoy things when they do go right. So I am glad that even though I tried my best to suppress my emotional attachment, when I sat on a log crying last week I was relieved to discover that I was already in love with another lost child. When we start withholding love in order to protect ourselves, we actually end up robbing ourselves as well as others of so much potential joy. Thanks to everyone who supported us last time, and we really do appreciate the encouraging support that we are receiving this time.  Its hard, but it helps make me more and more appreciative of the things I do have.

We washed an extra plate because Daniel came and ate.

Busy.

We always get so busy. “Stuff” always takes up so much of our time that significant opportunities unfortunately get missed weekly, daily, hourly. Today was not going to be one of those days. We had a lot of cleaning up to do today. Eric came over and helped me break down cardboard boxes that we had hung onto after moving. Then it was sweeping and mopping time. After that came the dishwasher…the list went on. Amanda came home from work exhausted, and started cooking right away. We had a big dinner on the go.

There were seven people coming over tonight. Daniel, though he didnt know it, was definitely the guest of honor. I love college students. They are poor and they are extremely grateful for minor things like a good home cooked meal..its so easy to keep them happy. What were our ‘regulars’ going to do when they met Daniel..how were we going to make sure he felt welcome and important to us? It can be hard when one guest is a 3 generation gap older than everyone else.

Daniel showed up with a bucket of ’strawberries and cream’ icecream.

He was a little bit nervous, and a lotta bit excited. Everyone was really friendly, they introduced themselves just like mom had taught them to do. He was cold so he asked if he could keep his coat on. He apologized when he shook our hands, he said it was hard to keep his hands warm. Next time i’ll turn up the heat a bit more ahead of time, this time I just cranked up the fireplace. The regulars asked good questions to get him talking, he relaxed and laughed a few times. He told us that he was feeling old telling stories about things that happened to him in his life before any of us were even born. Then he laughed again.

He had perfect manners. He sat there and waited until the hostess had been served and had started eating before he took a bite. His eyes were huge as he eyed dinner excitedly. Then he dug in. He explained to the regulars how happy he was that he was eating food like this, with company like this. He told the same stories a couple times, it was awesome. The regulars listened eagerly whenever he repeated himself. We decided to go around the room and tell a bit about ourselves. I told Jeff that if he talked too long, i would gong him by hitting my spoon on my glass. Everyone took a turn and Daniel listened carefully. He was learning about his new friends. I noticed that he remembered names throughout the evening. Impressive. When we got to Amanda she said that I should talk about her as if i was amanda, and she would tell about me as if she was Jo-Ben. I said about three words and then Jeff gonged me with his spoon, it was pretty funny. We had some good laughs as I pretended I was amanda and mentioned several times about how lucky “i” was to meet the perfect man of my dreams.

When it came time for dessert he got really excited again. I had to tell him not to wait for Amanda to start eating because his icecream was starting to melt. Amanda made a delicious banana dessert. Daniel told her so several times. I accidentally made an extra plate of dessert…Daniel laughed pretty hard when Eric asked me why I had two plates in front of me. I hadn’t noticed. I told him that one was for the spoon in my left hand. Then i picked up amanda’s spoon and said that the other was for the spoon in my right hand. Daniel grinned from ear to ear.

After dinner we played Farkle. Its a great dice game based almost entirely on Luck. We played for about an hour, I was a very ungracious host and accidentally won. We had a lot of laughs….a lot of laughs. Daniel told us about his kids and grandkids. He talked a little bit about battling cancer, and mentioned people by name who were kind to him when he was sick. He says sometimes he doesn’t feel well and has to miss out on things. He told us that he is a dreamer, and so what if he doesn’t always accomplish his dreams…at least he dreamed. He has a tandem bicycle sitting under his deck.. He put it there so that it would be protected from the elements until he got the chance to do some maintenance on it. Its been there, untouched, for five years now. Daniel had a good laugh. He told us that he had a Masters in Business and that he was an engineering consultant. He said that he had a pilots license and that he had won several awards in engineering. It made him happy that people wanted to hear about his accomplishments in life. He told us about mistakes he has made, and his relatively recent conversion to a Faith in Christ. He told us that strict churches were made for guys like him who needed structure…its funny hearing that from an older dude. He told us that we were still young with our whole lives ahead of us. He told us that we could do anything we wanted. He repeated that our whole lives were in front of us.

He said he had to get going. He had been smiling for most of the evening, his cheeks were probably sore. We all walked him to the door. He put his shoes on and stood there facing all of us. He thanked us for walking up to him and inviting him in the hospital. I told him that he hadn’t had a bbq on our deck yet so he was going to have to come back if he was willing to spend another evening with us. He said he had so much fun. He said goodbye to amanda and asked her to please invite him again. He was such a cute old dude. He waved goodbye and said again to please have him back, he had so much fun with us.

Daniel blessed us tonight and I almost didn’t bother to mow the lawn, again. I wonder how big of a blessing I passed up the last time I disobeyed and didn’t answer the call to mow the lawn. Not this time, this time we washed an extra plate because Daniel came and ate.

It was just a lawn.

He was just an old man.

I was sitting next to Amanda at the doctors office. She was there getting a checkup, its a girl thing that they do to make us guys feel guilty for not taking care of ourselves. I was sitting beside her, supporting her, telling her that she was probably going to have to get a shot or have blood drawn. Its best to prepare people for the worst….especially when they are morbidly afraid of even the mention of needles. I was looking through a catalog of soccer jerseys, compiling my wish list of uniforms. My soccer teams puts a decent squad on the field for games, but our old and undersized jerseys make us look like a bit of a joke. I was pretty focused on figuring out a way to use my ’salesmanship’ talents to sell our team to a business as a collection of walking billboards, so please buy our jerseys and we will let you put your logo on our chests. It was a pretty big deal. He shuffled into the room and sat across from Amanda. There were only three of us in the waiting room. He tried to strike up a conversation a couple times, told me his name was Daniel, but I was pretty busy.

He spoke to Amanda a couple times and then conversation died down and he sat there smiling…with a friendly look on his face. He seemed abnormally pale. In walked an even older man and Daniel recognized him. He quickly explained how he had seen the other man’s wife being brought into the hospital and he was really worried about her. It was a fall, broken foot, broken ankle. The pain and concern that news caused Daniel was written on his face. Daniel was asked how he was doing. Fine Fine, now make sure you get your wife one of those great new walkers with wheels on them, you know she is going to want to be active as soon as possible, he answered.

I meant how are you doing? Daniel said that the blood tests were fine and the urinary tests seem to say that things are going ok. Other than that, he asked Daniel? He said that he was as good as could be expected for an old single guy living on an acreage by himself eating food out of a can. I meant about the cancer. Oh,..that…, Daniel looked up and said that the doctor told him it could be 5 months or it could be 5 years but the important thing was that today he felt ok. Daniel said that he has made a habit of coming into town every two days for one meal, then he listed of the last several placed he picked to eat and which days he ate there.

Amanda Barkey?..we got up and went into the back…i sat in a new chair just outside the door. No needles today…well there goes a bunch of wasted palm sweat.

We walked outside, despite a clear slate of health for Amanda, it was a heavy walk to the car. I just felt so bad. We should have talked to him more..he just wanted a friend…we should have done something..we should have invited him for dinner. In Calgary, in 1996, I walked past a yard with overgrown grass on my way to church every Sunday. Every Sunday I thought about that lawn during my entire walk and every Sunday I chickened out. I knew that I was supposed to stop and offer to mow that lawn, but I chose not to and took the easy way out. I have never forgotten about that lawn.

you should go back and ask him, i bravely offered. why don’t you, she said? I walked back into the hospital..he was easy to spot. He was the happy, ultra hip guy talking away on his cell phone in the waiting room. Those pictures of cell phones on the wall with a red line through them be damned.

I waited behind for him to finish his conversation. I was a little nervous. The room was now full of people. I walked over and asked him if i could have his phone number. I’ve asked for phone numbers before..from girls way prettier than him, why was I nervous?

He looked at me and smiled. He beamed. It was much bigger than a smile. He pulled out his very own business card and pointed to the phone number. He said that was his cell number. It said ‘Cell Number’ right next to the number. He was very excited to hand it out. I told him that my wife and I were hoping that he would come over and join us for supper later that week. He stuttered a few times. He told me that its amazing how sometimes people see someone and they just know that they could really use a meal and a friend. He thanked me. I went home and arranged for some more friends to come and meet my new friend Daniel. I phoned him up an told him to come over at 6:30 on Thursday.

Tomorrow is Thursday and I am excited. Tomorrow I get another chance to mow the lawn.

Successfully Significant

Define for me, Success.

Wikipedia says that it is an *achievement of an objective/goal, *a level of social success, *the opposite of failure.

Oddly enough Success was also the name of an automobile manufacturing company that boasted a car with a two-cylinder gasoline engine, steel tires (rubber for an extra 25 bucks), and a chain drive. It claimed speeds of 4-18 miles per hour depending on which one you picked off the lot and an incredible 100 miles per gallon. The story of Success ends after only ten years in the manufacturing business when, despite the bargain deal of only 250 dollars per “horseless carriage”, it joined the long list of early unsuccessful automobile companies.

If someone sets bargain basement level goals are they a success when they attain them? Would you consider your neighborhood angst ridden teen a success if he told you that he was happy to report reaching his goals for the day, which involved waking up, finishing off the chips he fell asleep eating and smoking a half a pack of menthol cigarettes?

Would the man in front of you in line at the grocery store earn the title of success if you know he was a multi millionaire, a member of all the right social clubs, the captain of his mens lacrosse team, a red cross volunteer, a regular donater of blood, a living organ donor and the head of your neighborhood watch? What if you also knew that behind closed doors he beat his wife and verbally abused his kids?

Is the standard set too low when we tell people that in order to be a success, they just have to make sure they don’t fail? Is a D- on a report card even good enough to earn a kid a raise in his allowance? Is a D- the mark of a successful student?

So what then is a true definition of Success?

I would propose that as we get caught up thinking about what we need to do in order to be a success, what we actually should be focusing on are ways to be significant.

*meaningful, *of consequence, *having or likely to have a major effect, *important, *influential, *effective.

I was a boss of manual labor crews for many years. In my trial and error attempts to motivate guys I learned that one of the most important factors in attaining high levels of achievement was the ability to focus and take ownership, i.e. internalize. When you reach a state of self awareness that allows you to claim ownership over your circumstances you are then ready to push the boundaries of your limitless potential. The harsh reality is that there are many external factors that greatly influence our ability to attain success as it has been defined for us. These factors are often beyond our control, lowering the ceiling of our potential by taking ownership away from the individual and placing it on the circumstances that are we are placed in. This in turn leaves a wide vacuum of space ripe for the picking by every defeatist attitude our minds can conjure up. We then find it easy to believe the lies of society- “i’m too fat”, “i dont have enough money”, “i dont drive the right car”. Then the soft little shoulder of societys swoops in and says that nothing is our fault because we were held back by our circumstances. lies.

I propose that whenever you hear the term success, instead substitute the term Significance. I will give an example. When you ask yourself if your accrued wealth makes you successful, what you are actually asking yourself is whether or not you are making enough money compared to your peers. Since you can not control what your peers make, you have taken ownership out of your own hands. When you ask yourself if you are a successful athlete, you are actually asking yourself whether or not you are at an ‘acceptable level’ compared to your peers. Again, your limits of potential are lowered. If instead, you ask yourself if your wealth, your athleticism, your time management, your work ethic, your family life, your charitable donations etc. make you significant, then you have taken the reins.

I believe that one of our main purposes in life is fulfilled only when we answer the call to be significant. We are each given a unique quantity and diversity of talents, what we do with that amount determines our significance. Do I make a significant positive impact on the people that I come into contact with? Do I use a significant amount of my wealth to increase the quality of life of those in need? Do I use my athleticism in a way that makes a significant positive impact on the kid that always gets picked last?

Often when you reach out to that lonely kid that never gets picked, your chances of being successful diminish, but Every time you do, your level of significance increases.

I only wear one at a time.

I didn’t know I was poor, as far as I knew my family was “well off”. The question that asks itself is this, is it possible to be poor without knowing it? If you don’t even know that you don’t own something, then does it matter?

I always had food to eat. And except for the time that all my underwear and most of my clothes were stolen, I always had a change of clothes in the closet. I was, however, a regular grubby little boy growing up in the jungle. Basically that meant that even though I had a change of clothes, I usually waited until my dirty clothes had to be peeled from my body before I actually changed them. There was something sickly satisfying in the feeling you got when you outlasted your clothes.

I had this one purple shirt when I was a kid. I wore it all the time, after all it was ‘The’ perfect shirt. It was so thin (people in N. America would call it ‘threadbare’) that you could see through it in many parts. It came out of a missionary barrel, how kind of someone to send me their t-shirt when it was so worn out that you could actually see through it. The thing was, I didn’t even know that it was worn out, I was just so pumped at how perfect of a jungle shirt it was. I was pretty sure that it was made especially for tropical climates. None of my other shirts were as comfortably breathable as that purple shirt was. I was explaining to my mom one time how great that shirt was, and how disappointed I was that holes were beginning to show on the shoulders when she broke the news that it was actually just a really old shirt. On the one hand, this was a major disappointment but on the other hand it was exciting that all my shirts now had the potential of one day becoming as comfortable as that purple shirt if I could just be committed enough to wear them for long stretches of consecutive days in order to ‘break them in’.

I never had cool shoes, but I didn’t know that until someone told me. There really was no need to buy shoes since I went barefoot everywhere, and besides shoes just made your feet sweat. Then in grade 8 my friends and I got together and formed a basketball team. We played in Callao, the little town near where we lived. The basketball court was in the town square, right across from the police station. The hoop on one end was 10 1/2 feet and the hoop on the other end was 9 feet. Matt Young could touch the rim on the low end, it was a pretty big deal. It was hard to play on the concrete without shoes because it got so hot during the day. I was getting into basketball during that stage of my life. I used to jump and try to touch the ceiling in every building I walked into, I was basically keeping a daily log of how many millimeters my vertical leap improved each day. For my birthday my mom bought me a t-shirt with the chicago bulls written on it, I was a big Micheal Jordan fan. I didn’t care that the shirt was maroon with blue writing because it didn’t matter that the colors were wrong. I was proud of my Bulls shirt and wore it almost every day. It was the perfect size, about 3 sizes too big, just how I liked it.

Since I was becoming quite the basketball enthusiast, my dad surprised me with a trip into the market in Pucallpa, a city we lived near. We moseyed around, that’s a term my dad used to use, and I tried on a couple pairs of shoes. As I tried to wriggle my way into every pair of shoes I would emphatically explain to my dad how comfortable they were and how I was pretty sure they were the perfect shoe. Since Peruvians have such tiny feet, I had a difficult time convincing him while my heel was sticking out the top of the shoe. Finally I found the perfect shoe, meaning that my foot actually fit inside the shoe. It was a gray pair of Nike basketball shoes. I was SO excited. I wore them all around, sweat puddling around my feet like a fat kid in a sauna, but I didn’t care one bit.

I played in a game with them on Saturday morning, I probably scored a basket or two. Afterwards my dad took us to the cafeteria and got us a hamburger and french fries (it was actually the only thing on the menu, every Saturday) it was a special treat for us. My feet were so hot, but there was no way I was taking those shoes off. I walked around looking for a place to sit, past many empty seats in order to make sure I completed a full circuit so that everyone would see my new shoes, then I went and sat with my friends. Some of them had shoes too, but mine were gray Nike basketball shoes, they were sort of a big deal. I sat down and stretched my leg out, putting my shoe up on the chair next to me. It was just a comfortable way to sit, of course the added bonus that was ‘totally unintended’ was that everyone could see my new shoes. “Are those new?”, someone asked me. “what, oh these…oh yeah, just picked em up, pretty cool”. People were more interested in making sure they had enough ketchup on their plate for their fries, but at least someone had noticed. I was enjoying my burger when someone leaned over and said that they thought the Nike swoosh symbol was supposed to swoosh in the other direction. Through my mouthful I laughed and said that of course it looked that way because they were looking at it backwards. Silly. But now people were actually looking at my shoes. This would have been really cool except for the fact that one of them pointed out something that I hadn’t noticed before. Not only was the swoosh actually backwards, but instead of being Nike Basketball shoes, the were actually Mike Basketball shoes. crap. Well they didn’t fit any differently, and they also were still a present from my pops, so I continued to wear them proudly, but I will admit that a little bit of the glitter wore off that day.

years later, the first pair of real Nike’s I ever owned were stolen from me by my cousin. My grandma felt so badly that she took me straight to the mall and bought me a new pair. I tried not to accept them but she said that it was rude for grandkids not to take Christmas Presents from their Grandmas. I told her that it was too expensive of a present, so she said that it would be a combined Christmas/Birthday present. Of course when Christmas rolled around 4 months later and my birthday 7 months later, she conveniently forgot that she had already given me my presents. I later burned a hole in those shoes in a welding class. I wanted to weld barefoot but the teacher said that we had to wear shoes in case a spark flew. I tried to explain that my foot would get better but if I burnt my shoes that I would always have a hole in them. I couldn’t get him to see reason.

We always had tons of food to eat, and so what if my shoes weren’t exactly the same brand that Micheal Jordan wore. We didn’t have a Nintendo or a TV. We also didn’t have many new toys, but that only made us more creative. We built toys out of cardboard, wood and tape. We could have anything our imaginations thought to build, I’m sure that meant we weren’t poor.

When I was in Junior High we came back to Canada for Furlough. We visited the churches that supported my parents and tried to remember our relatives names. People would pinch my checks and tussle my hair and say things like “I bet it feels great to be back home, whats it been 4 yrs now?”. People forget that when you live someplace for 4 years and then go to visit another place for 10 months before heading back to the first place for 5 more years….the place you were visiting for 10 months isn’t home. I tried out for the soccer team at the Junior High School that I attended in Calgary for 4 months. I was a pretty good soccer player for my age, after all I had played it my whole life. After the tryouts the coach called me over and asked me if I owned a pair of shin guards, I said no. Then he asked me if I had some cleats I could wear. I said no. He told me that I wouldn’t be able to make the team because every player has to wear cleats and shin guards when they play. A couple days later a kid in art class asked me if the coach had talked to me that day. I quietly said no. He told me that the coach had been asking about me at lunch time because he had changed his mind and that it was fine for me to play barefooted and that he wanted me on the team. I managed to act calm but I was pretty excited. As soon as art class was done I raced off to find the coach. That kid was just lying cause he thought it was a funny thing to do. Its been 18 years and I can still remember that day clearly. It might have been funny for him, but it wasn’t for me. So I went back to having no friends. My parents bought me a bicycle with a banana seat, all the cool kids had mountain bikes. I ate my lunches out of a plastic bag, all the kids with friends ate theirs out of a paper bag. I never told my parents that I needed cleats to play. I’d like to think that if I was that coach, I would have coughed up 30 dollars to buy a kid with no friends some used cleats. I hated N. America.

I went to play soccer on Tuesday afternoon. I was kicking the ball around with my friends in Peru, we always spent too long warming up and only started actually playing once someone got mad that we were wasting all of the daylight. Living by the equator meant that the sun always set at about 6pm so its not like we could just play a bit later if we started late. We played with the local kids all the time, they were better at soccer so it was fun playing with them. One of the local kids showed up early with a big smile on his face, Jose was always excited to play with us when he got the chance. He usually wore a t-shirt with some holes in it but once the game started it didn’t matter, we were all just kids having fun playing a game we loved. That day Jose showed up just wearing his t-shirt and his underwear. He was kicking the ball around without a care in the world. I was joking around when I asked him if he thought not wearing shorts would help him score more goals. He just grinned and told me that he didn’t have own any shorts. My Spanish wasn’t that great when I was a kid so I made some comment and asked him again. When I figured out that Jose wasn’t wearing any shorts because he didn’t own any shorts I was embarrassed. I knew I had shorts in my closet at home, just sitting there. I was suddenly confronted with an embarrassing waste. He was totally happy and content, and I had tears welling up in my eyes. I took my shorts off and handed them too him. He took them from my hand, and put them on with a big smile on his face. Then chased after a soccer ball. I stood there, embarrassed. I had tears in my eyes, it wasn’t fair that I had extra clothes and he didn’t even have one pair of shorts. I walked home the back way so no one would see me. Why was I born into a life of privilege while he was going to be a fisherman his whole life, living off of what he caught and going hungry when he didn’t catch anything.

That is why I never realized that I was poor. My whole life taught me that soccer can be just as fun when you play barefoot. Sandwiches taste the same out of a plastic bag as they do out of a paper bag. A t-shirt that is the wrong color, can still be a Chicago Bulls shirt. ‘Mike’ is only one letter away from an overpriced shoe. A bicycle with a banana seat is actually more comfortable to sit on. You appreciate a toy that you make more than one you that you buy. A threadbare t-shirt is actually more comfortable in tropical heat. And finally, I can only wear one pair of shorts at a time.