A shrill cry echoed through the halls of St. Francis Hospital as a small lump of newly born life entered the world. The entrance of his sunburn-red face and tiny patch of brown hair put an end to a mother’s fourteen hours of labor and nine months without beloved coffee. With his entrance, a new book had begun. As the pages turned, that shrill cry softened itself into the voice of an inquisitive toddler.
Working away furiously within his mind one summer afternoon, this curious little boy concluded with the utmost certainty that he would ask the pizza man a very important question. Approaching the unsuspecting worker as he came towards the family reunion party, the child asked, nonchalantly, if the man could come into the house that was bursting at the boards with guests, open the pizza box, and personally take off every last pepperoni baked deep within the pizza’s steaming surface. The toddler’s pages recorded this request, and they continued to fill as the child’s interests expanded beyond pizza toppings, and towards subjects such as Little League baseball.
The boy stood alone at the point of the diamond, tightly gripping a sweat-drenched baseball bat in his hands. He stood below betwixt the blinding rays of towering spotlights that illuminated the baseball field, within an oasis amongst the darkness of midnight that enveloped the city. The calls and cheers from the dugout added weight to the fear in his stomach. As the ball lofted towards him, his bat swung and the ball careened into the shadows of deep outfield. He was greeted at home plate with delighted screams and a barrage of helmet-hitting that could have induced a concussion.
The warmth of that moment would have served the boy well as he performed within his first High School play. Standing within the shadows of the side curtains, his legs shivered feverishly as he attempted to inhale and exhale evenly. With the music started, there was no turning back. Standing in place, a key piece of dialogue on stage unlocked the set of mechanical movements that he had rehearsed for two months. The rapid beating of his heart and the stinging glare of the stage lights forced him to rely on reflex as he sang out to a large pit of darkness.
After this, he began to train for a very different type of performance. After almost an entire year of pages passed, the Mock Trial Competition commenced. Acting as the Witness, he waited to be called up to the podium, briskly scanning over all of his notes until his ears perked up at the sound of his name. Walking carefully across the courtroom, he took his seat in an over-sized leather chair that must have just exited a freezer of some sort. A long, black, adjustable microphone was pointed menacingly a few inches from his face. The silence within the room produced a tension that was almost suffocating. He looked towards his teammates, who gazed up with severe expressions carved upon their faces. Despite all of this, he looked ahead calmly, for he was ready for what was coming ahead. On the other hand, he was certainly not prepared for what he experienced soon after the competition during his first plane ride. This event allowed the growing boy to see the world from a very different perspective.
As the flowers of May began to bloom that year, he left the United States on a plane heading towards London. After waking from a long nap on the plane at around 3:00AM, he decided to peer out of his window. Hidden thousands of feet in the air within the deepest shrouds of night, his spine tingled at the amazing sights before him. Although his group had been flying over the Atlantic Ocean for hours, he now saw faint, midnight blue outlines of massive pieces of land scattered around, which he could tell were islands. Soft, glossy lights formed grids across these islands, indicating the power used by thousands of people. It was breathtaking to see the world from this perspective, far larger than the single book that he continued to fill. |
