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.

My kid is better than your kid.

Every once in awhile you spot a kid that you Know is gonna be smarter than your kid, then you go home and try to train your kid to do the same tricks the smart kid was doing. Then you decide that the other kid was probably just a full grown midget in diapers.

….yeah..a midget.

a nameless funeral in the jungle.

I was getting a drink of water from the tap in the kitchen.

This time i was using a cup because my mom always gave me a hard time for sucking the water right out of the tap, what can i say..i was raised in the jungle. The fruit on the tree outside was getting ripe. I couldn’t wait to climb that tree and pick the biggest juiciest tangelo. It was always a race to get the first one that ripened each season. I was already full of plans to sit up there in the branches, tear off the peeling, and let the juices run down my chin with a grin on my face as i devoured each slice. As long as none of my siblings beat me to the first one, my plan was going to work just fine. It was always a waiting game…a huge game of chicken. Out of the corner of your eye you would watch the peel slowly turn from dark green to a yellowish/green shade. If you picked it too soon then you were in for one sour slice after another but if you waited too long then you had to pretend you didn’t care that your brother was the one with the juice dribbling down the front of his tshirt.

I was staring intently out the window, trying to will the fruit to ripen, when uncle Scottie walked through our yard. Growing up in Peru i never really got to know my family ‘back home’, until I was much older. There were a bunch of us ‘gringos’ all in the same boat, living side by side, with limited contact with our extended families. Somewhere along the line kids started referring to adults as “uncle” and “aunt” instead of mr. and mrs., it helped to created a unique ‘family’ bond that still stands today.

I watched uncle scottie labor through our yard carrying in his arms a bundled blanket. As I turned to head back towards the dining room table, something about the way he was carrying that blanket tugged at me. I was drawn by the way he cradled it in his arms, with a careful tenderness. I went to the back door and peered out. I watched the slouching of his shoulders, I could feel the pulse of weariness carried to me across the midday waves of heat.

Uncle scottie suffered from “It”. Its scary to see your friends and ‘family’ get attached by an illness. It was random. What did you eat? What part of the jungle had you just traveled to? Do you remember getting any bad insect bites? Where are you getting your drinking water from? There was no pattern. We were scared because an illness without a name can attack anyone, so we called it, “It”. Later we found out that it was Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which the textbook tells us is characterized as a severe mental and physical exhaustion that is “unrelieved by rest”. It comes with a slew of other problems, but to us it was just “It”.

Uncle scottie struggled to open the back gate and walk into the field behind our house, his hands were full and we had to keep that gate latched in order to make sure that our crafty goats didn’t run helter-skelter through the yard. I walked a little ways behind him, wondering where he was going. He turned right and walked along the barbed wire fence for a little bit. I knew what he was carrying. I closed the gate he had left ajar and walked down the path after him. He veered to the left, away from the fence. I knew what was happening. Uncle scottie stopped and stood there with his back to me. I was 12, I knew what we were doing.

When he turned to look at me weariness and sadness magnified the tears that were brimming his eyes. Uncle scottie started to set down his burden but stopped short and stood there for a minute, holding it. There was a shovel sticking out of a mound of fresh dirt. I didn’t say anything, I just turned and climbed down into the hole. I looked up at uncle scottie for awhile. We didn’t say anything. Uncle scottie slowly lowered the bundle down into my arms. I held it for a minute, Uncle scottie said that he was only two. I placed him as gingerly as I could down on his final resting place. I paused for a moment, then climbed out of the hole. Uncle scottie and I stood there for a minute, we both shed some silent tears in sadness. Then I pulled the shovel out of the fresh dirt and slowly filled the six foot hole. Uncle scottie took turns with me. It was a silent funeral marked with several tears and the sweat of our labor.

Afterwards all that was left to mark a life was a small mound of dirt that slowly sank as time passed. Soon there was only a brown spot and then not even that. I feel a connection to that little boy. I never heard him laugh, I didn’t cling to him as he passed his final moments here and I couldn’t even pronounce his name. Some people live their whole lives hoping to be remembered. I remember that little peruvian boy, and so does uncle scottie.

I went back to watching the fruit ripen, and drinking water right out of the tap but I never forgot that little boy. I never forgot those moments I spent helping uncle scottie bury a child and learning that its ok for grownups to cry sometimes.

Amanda, my cutie

This is my wife, just before we got engaged….which also happened to be Right after we started dating.

Snow!

Another planting curve ball. Taking it all in stride with Jesse (Zeus) and Reuben Zuidhof.

fly-by

My friend Jay, getting a close shave from Tara.

my wife said.

Amanda said that i shouldnt have written the article about getting published by the Calgary Herald. She said that there is something wrong with starting out a brand new blog with a lie. I just laughed, again…and said “April Fools”, again…haha

round one- Jo-Ben

toothpaste for dinner.

I headed to Buenos Aires, Argentina, with plans of tracking down my friends. I had split off from the group I was traveling with in order to spend a bit more time with a friend in Peru. I was racing through countries trying to catch up to the boys, while still enjoying a glimpse of some of the sites, when I got sidetracked in Argentina’s capital for a few days.

It was almost time to hit up a bank machine again. I had just prepaid four nights stay at a hotel that advertised cozy rooms with extra amenities. I swung open the door to my room and discovered what cozy and extra meant in Argentina. Cozy meant that my door hit the bed when I opened it. Extra meant that there was a tv in every room. Cozy meant that due to a lack of floor space the tv was mounted on my ceiling, hanging precariously over my bed while i slept. Extra meant that I didn’t have to share a communal shower because there was one right in my room. Cozy meant that I had to take my showers while sitting on the toilet, with my knees touching the door, and pull a cord to turn the water on overhead. Extra meant that I had a free plastic bag in the bathroom. Cozy meant that i was supposed to put the toilet paper in that bag because of the shower was located right over the tp roll. Extra meant that they charged me more for all of this.

I was starting to feel sick, the full body muscle ache/headache/sore throat/throw-up/fever kind. The kind that makes you groan and sigh a lot. The kind that makes you ask strangers to feel your forehead and tell you if its warm. The kind that makes you want everything else to go smoothly for a couple days.

I walked down to the pedestrian boardwalk area, and with a fever induced fascination, watched some statue people for way too long. There are all kinds of people on the streets trying to hold your attention long enough to get a buck or two out of you. Some of them juggle soccer balls, some of them play the violin. Many of them have real skills that are worth rewarding with a couple bucks, but some of them are just a waste of skin in the entertainment world. You know the ones, the people who paint themselves in a sickly silver color and then hold one position for hours at a time. We watch them for a couple minutes then for some reason we feel obliged to pay them some of our hard earned money, for being lazy and doing absolutely nothing for hours on end. Oh look honey, that man has stood perfectly still for an extended period of time, lets pay him some of that money that you earned while mucking out stalls on a dairy farm. Worst job ever by the way, shoveling manure that has been cured in rotten milk, yum. Kind of ridiculous.

Anyway, I stood there for way too long watching a man do absolutely nothing, i blame the fever. I finally shuffled away after putting two Argentinian dollars into his can. I was hungry but didn’t feel like eating. I knew that i probably should get some energy food into my body so i stopped at a vendor to buy an amoebic riddled delight to eat. The bill came to two dollars. I knew that I had a hundred dollar bill in one pocket and a two dollar bill in the other. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the hundred first. One glance at the look on the lady’s face told me that there was no way she was gonna be breaking my bill for me. As I fished around in my pocket for the two dollar bill, pulling out all sorts of pocket lint in the process, a man ran by me. He reached out his hand and accepted my deposit into his pick-pocket fund.

I’m usually a pretty quick thinker on my feet, so i place all the blame on my death-flu when i admit that not only did i not run after him, but i also didn’t even shout or point. I just kinda watched him run off down my hazy tunnel vision, then i turned to the lady and told her i didn’t think i’d be having that tasty treat after all.

Now it really was time to hit up a bank machine. No big deal i thought. That guy probably needed food and a blanket and even though he was gonna buy alcohol and drugs in the near future, my hundred dollars was gonna go towards buying him the food, i was pretty sure. I wandered several blocks to where i had seen a bank and swiped my Royal Bank card. I had just taken money out of there a day or two earlier, but this time it said that my card wasn’t accepted. After trying several banks i took my last two dollars and went to an internet cafe. I got online and managed to get ahold of my dad on MSN. I told him that my card wasn’t working so he said he would call the bank and see what was going on. A couple minutes later he came back online and told me that it was good news. My card was fine, it was just that their international internet banking was down and would probably be down for a couple days. Not good news. I thanked my dad and told him i was relieved to hear that, just a mini-white lie to keep him from worrying.

Luckily I had already paid for 4 nights accommodations or my next 4 days would have been even rougher. On the second day i walked all over Buenos Aires, trying my card in every single bank i found, with no success. By that night i was getting desperately thirsty and my hunger pains weren’t making it any easier to deal with the flu. I started trying to think of ways to panhandle for money, but I was throwing up all the time and didn’t think there were many people out there willing to pay to watch someone, covered in decorative toothpaste, throw up several times a day. Besides i needed that toothpaste. On the morning of the third day i decided to start my day with a smile. I walked into my mini bathroom and brushed my teeth and cleaned away my sickness breath. The toothpaste made my mouth feel so fresh and clean. The first little bit that i swallowed may have been an accident, but the next half a tube i ate was on purpose. I was so hungry. I had never eaten anything that tasted nearly so delicious as a half a tube of toothpaste, which i quickly chased with gulp fulls of non potable water. Within days you could add cramping diarrhea to the list but at the time i didn’t care. I made the toothpaste last through the third and into the fourth day but by the time midday rolled around i was desperately stumbling up and down the streets. My prepaid room was about to run out and i wasn’t excited about spending a couple nights on the street. It would be pretty rough if i had to go borrow a blanket from that pickpocket.

Finally, at about the eight bank i tried, the screen lit up with the most magical words ever, “enter amount”. Cue the “Feast of Sickness in Buenos Aires”, blast the trumpets and get outta my way, i had some grocery shopping to get to. You know how a smart shopper will always tell you to never go grocery shopping when you are hungry? Its like the rule about never emailing an exgirlfriend after 1 in the morning, there’s just some things you shouldn’t do. I shattered that rule. I was a madman, i can still clearly picture the store in my head, and i can even hear myself trying to explain my weird grocery list and crazy eyes to the poor girl at the counter who didn’t care one bit. One of life’s cruelest pranks is what your body does when you get hungry, i mean really hungry. Your stomach size works in the opposite direction, proportionally, to the size of your hunger. As your eyes start to swim with hunger, your stomach works its way down to the size of a pea. I sat on the curb, with people walking all around me, making an absolute spectacle of myself. I can only imagine what people were thinking as they paused to watch a raggedy white kid force a half a loaf of bread, two bananas, 600ml of coke, two trays of cookies, a bottle of orange juice, six crayons (just kidding), and three bites of an apple into a space the size of a pea. I am sure that as many of them were eying me, down their turned up noses, they were muttering things like glutton and ’stupid americano’. But i didn’t care.

Oh i cared later, as my hunger pains turned to severe stomach cramps and then to volcanic diarrhea, i cared. But right in that moment of bliss, i didn’t care because once again toothpaste was for brushing teeth. And it wasn’t so bad, life has little ways of working itself out. It seems like if you just give it a chance, yesterdays annoyances can often become todays conveniences. It just sorta alleviated some complications later that night when i ran out of toilet paper, that i was conveniently placed right under the shower head.