:This is a part of my memoir. Enjoy the reading!--
Call me Romel, which is in fact my real name. My name was chosen by my godfather, a good friend of my late father. He chose to name me after Rommel, a German general he saw from a World War II movie and read about after. My father agreed with the name because he too saw the movie, and they both believed that names play an important role in someone’s destiny. They wanted me to be a man of character, brave and smart.
Somehow I share the same belief that attributed me my name. I remember how I insisted when my brother had his first child that I chose a well defined name for her, my goddaughter. Years later I chose to call my son William expecting him to have the savoir faire and popularity of William Shakespeare and William Clinton. In fact most of the Williams I know are brilliants. Please, don’t get me wrong. Don’t go calling your daughter Beyonce because you want her to be an R&B singer or your son Denzel because you expect him to receive an Oscar. I don’t think it works that way, unless ones have impervious faith, which is uncommon. No matter how you envision it, only God can shape someone’s future, but if you deem it God will make it happen.
Before going further let me describe myself: I am loyal. I am honest. I am a human being.
I try to be loyal, honest and open minded in all situations, as difficult as that can be sometimes, I try as hard as I can. I recognize perfectly that people have a tendency to take advantage of you when you are loyal to them. It takes more than courage to be loyal; it takes sacrifice, lots of sacrifices. But there are unseen benefits in being loyal. For myself, it has kept me away from a lot of dilemmas and regrets.
I am practical and I am a “smart player”. In my opinion, you’re practical when you play smart. You don’t have to be an A student, but if you happen to be smart in the vernacular sense of the term that’s a big plus. Yet most of my successful stories results from playing smart. Some time ago, when I was a young boy I observed that the most successful people were not the smartest. They knew how to play smart, they were good actors. Let me explain:
Life is like a grand play in which each of us has a role. We get to choose our roles and our successes depend on how well we play. I see our real life as what is going on inside our heads or minds: our dreams, our desires, and our surreptitious thoughts. Even now as I am typing these paragraphs I am playing the role of a writer.
If you want to be a successful actor, learn your lines, follow guidelines, observe other successful people and don’t be afraid to ask questions, and most of all tell people exactly what part of the script you want to play. Subsequently be the best actor you can be. That’s exactly what successful actors do. I try to do the same in life. I have tried different roles in my short life. It doesn’t go well all the time but it often works wonderfully.
Do you notice that in movies there are people who always get the principal roles? They look beautiful, smart, and they have that aura that shines around them on the big screen and in real life. We always remember their names, the movies they played in, and even some of their lines, they are intentional actors. on the other side, there are actors that we barely remember after we leave the movie theater. We don’t even remember their character names even though they played an important role in the movie. And when you think about it, the movie would have been hazy without their characters. I call them reflexive actors.
From a very young age (I can’t tell exactly when) I realized that I could not be in the spotlights like some of my little friends. I was a reflexive actor. People would refer to me as somebody’s friend or family member, until I started to speak my mind. It was like I was seen because someone else was present or existed. one day I realized that when I tell my friends precisely what I want them to do I became an entity. They would say phrases like Romel says, Romel thinks, Romel wants. I suddenly felt I was important in their eyes. It’s like I could do things they are not able to do.
I remember I was probably twelve, there were between two or three soccer games in my neighborhood almost every day, but the teams were all teenagers and even men in their twenties. The only thing my friends and I could do was to watch and cheer them on. My friends and I could only play when those big guys were tired, or it was so dark that they could not see the ball anymore. let me tell you this: I got sick of it, sick of them. One day I told my friends “I have an idea; we are going to play on our own”, “but we have no ball,” they said. I retorted “we will put money together, we will buy our own ball, and we will get on the field before they do, and they will be forced to wait.” For a few seconds I felt like I was in a grave yard… Silence! Then I heard some rejections like, “but they will kick us out.” However more voices were with me, the idea was quickly accepted and I became a leader over night without knowing it.
Soon a problem surfaced: who will be responsible for keeping the ball? That was a big hitch, because in that era parents considered kids playing soccer as “hoodlums”. With all eyes fixed on me, I wished I never came up with the idea. I became responsible to hold the ball. After every match it was a nightmare for me to hide the ball under my bed crossing my fingers and wishing that my mom would never find out. It wasn’t easy to gather the money for the ball either. The most fortunate kid gave almost half of the money, sadly he could only watch from his balcony. For the other half of the money I had to almost literally put my hand in the pocket of some kids to get their contributions. Finally we bought that cheap soccer ball for the equivalent of one dollar. Now buying the ball was hard but playing with it was even harder. It was harder not just because of our parents, but also because those aggressive and self-centered older kids.
That Friday after the ball was purchased we went to the so called soccer field early. I call it that because the soccer field was an about 80 by 50 feet of concrete space over an underground water cittern which was use as a parking lot inside the yard of the national soccer field. That day we could not concentrate on playing the ball, we were too nervous. We were playing but our eyes were else where looking all around us. We did not talk about it but we were looking for those older teenagers to come and kick us out. A few minutes have passed and the game was becoming interesting, passing people were gathering. And suddenly a hand seized the ball while somebody cried “GAME OVER”. My chest hurts just thinking about it now. I walked toward the guy who had the ball; he was probably 5 years older than I was, and I looked him straight in the eyes, grabbed the ball from his dirty hands and told him “IF YOU TOUCH THE BALL AGAIN I’LL RIP YOUR HEAD OFF”, I could not myself believe I just said that. My friends freaked out. My big brother who was very protective of me did know what to do. It seemed as though I surprised the guy also. It took him some time to react. There is no way I could fight this guy. In my mind I was thinking, oh my God! I am in big trouble. Suddenly a calm voice came from their group “The field is no ones property, whoever gets here first has the right to play. We are from the same neighborhood there is no need to fight over the filed.” That was Webber; he was about 19 or more then. I’ll tell you more about Webber later.
That day I stood up for what was right. If I had shut my mouth like my other friends that would be the end of it; we would never have gotten the right to have our own team, and all our efforts to buy our own ball would have been vain. That was probably when I realized you don’t have to be in the spotlight to accomplish certain things. You just need to be a good actor, and play your character well. But that mad kid wasn’t really me. I was naturally a sweet boy, I did not even know how to fight, and nevertheless I imagine I would if I had to. After that confrontation there was a couple of others, but we survived as a team. I gained certain admiration in the group and I even got to play with the teens’ and young adult teams the same year.
