Positive Experience

When Pepetonio was about 8 years old, I showed him how to tie a necktie (single Windsdor, like the real men). He asked me to show him again, and I did so slowly, with him following along. Pepe has been tying his own tie ever since, with no further instruction or demonstration. I commended him on his rapid mastery of the discipline this morning, and he sat back in my chair, reflecting. He said, "There have been a couple of times when I messed up and it turned out pretty weird, but overall I've had a positive experience with it."

Pepe is unique in his combination of both acting his age (10) and closing the gap (athletically, intellectually, etc.) between he and his much-older siblings. This is a boy who laughs at the "all-American" Budweiser commercials during the olympics because he knows Anheuser-Busch was recently acquired by a Belgian-Brazilian conglomerate. This is also a boy who regularly asks which of his stuffed animals we think he should sleep with tonight. This is a boy who can identify, either by sight or by sound, more birds than anyone I've ever met. This is a boy who told me that at his football game yesterday, he put the first kid he blocked on his back, but that after that, "he knew I was coming."

Hanging out with Pepe has been one of my favorite parts about living at home this summer, and I'll honestly miss him when I go back to Provo in the fall.