Happy Explorer
Age 6 – 11
Canada definitely was a different place, where kids played different games, ate different things, and in general, acted differently. I did what I found to be interesting: trying to balance myself on long poles of wood, throwing rocks through chain-linked fences without hitting it, and playing with my digital Mickey Mouse watch.
Don’t get me wrong, I was only half a loser. Sometimes I had social interaction: trading exotic Taiwanese fruit for Oreos and pepperoni sticks, making elastic band guns and shooting other kids, and sometimes I taught them Mandarin! Albeit, I told them “I’m an idiot.” actually meant “How are you?”, but either way, slowly, I started making friends! It wasn’t long before they were calling me “Little handsome boy”! (Ok… they thought it meant David Wen, but still).
My curious nature was not bounded by the school grounds. Crescent Park Elementary being the name of my school, there was obviously a Crescent Park adjacent to it, and it was there where Canada really differed from Taipei, Taiwan.
I don’t mean to be Pocahontas when I say that the forests of Crescent Park had taught me something of which I still live by today: to always try for your personal best. Each Monday, Thursday, and Friday morning, my P.E. teacher, Mr. Davidson, would take whoever was interested on a early morning run through the park. He had a system where you could count how many kilometers you’ve run, so as to push you to make it a personal goal to attain a certain kilometer count.
It was my first physically competitive activity to date. Running to see if I could beat my sister to the mango plate didn’t count. This was challenging, and I thrived on it. I realized I liked beating other kids! I rejoiced in their laziness and would run one or two more kilometers more than them each time. When I say “Happy Explorer”, I didn’t mean it just in the literal sense (though I did end up knowing every path in the hundred acre park), I also meant that during this period of my life, I explored who I was, what I was good at, and where my interests lay.
By age 11, I had joined the little league baseball club and became the ace pitcher, clean-up hitter, and MVP (it even says so on my baseball card :)). I was learning violin, art, French, and how to read and write mandarin better. If one imagined my typical day as a granola bar, the raisins would be the lessons and classes, the oats would be the daily routine things like brushing your teeth, all held together by the marshmallow that is me playing in the yard or going over to a friend’s house.
I guess these were what one would call the happy childhood days – the days that you would die to have when you’re in your twenties. There were many memories of waking up at 9:00a.m. (natural waking, mind you) and eating breakfast at my own slow pace, then heading outside to throw pitches against the garage, make bird traps, bike to the library…
Like most things, there are ebbs and high tides. Closer to 11, I somehow became quieter, more pensive, less daring. Maybe it was the awkward lankiness, or maybe it was thoughts of the girl I liked at the time (there was usually one every year, and no, I won’t name them here).
I guess one could say the happy explorer sailed straight into the Sirens of puberty; becoming temporary insane and much less talkative.
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