The kid in the Tree and the Children of Paradiso

The Kid in the Tree



I don't know how I forgot about the kid in the tree. I only spent three hours taking direction from him. And he was 8. I was walking down the dirt road through the village in Paradiso when this kid walks up to me and pokes me with a long stick. He had a huge smile on his face that said he was up to something. He started signaling me to follow him so like a nice gringo, I did. He told me where to stand and then he made a falling and catching kind of motion to indicate what was going to happen and what he wanted me to do. He climbed the tree in his bare feet and when he got to the very top of this big tree he starting knocking some kind of fruit out the tree (the falling part) and I started catching them (the catching part). This went on for the better part of an hour. Every time I would catch one he would howl with laughter. Every time I would miss one (and especially when one would bounce off my head or splat on my shirt) he would laugh even harder. When he finished, he descended the tree in monkey-like fashion and showed me how to eat the fruit. I don't know what it was but it tasted like an apricot. I saw him throw one of the bad ones down the road and realized the kid had a cannon for an arm. I asked him if he liked baseball and he said that he did. I asked him if he had heard of NAMBLA and luckily he hadn't (Google it. No, I am NOT a member). I found some pits from the fruit and started pitching to him. I explained to him the concept of over the line (it's a SoCal thing - you NoCals won't get it). We made a single, double, triple, and homerun line and I kept score for him. We bounced back and forth between rotten fruit wars and the game of over the line until it was getting dark and his mom called for him. She mouthed a "Gracias" to me and he pulled the old rotten-piece-of-fruit-in-the-hand high five trick as he ran buy. I had to act surprised by the rotten piece of fruit I saw him put in his hand. I Wish I could buy the kid a baseball glove.



The Children of Paradiso



These people truly do live in paradise - warm water, beautiful beaches, fresh fish, close families and friends, and the most perfect wave I have ever surfed. From the time they are born until about 18 or 19, they live what I would say is the ideal lifestyle. It's is almost exactly how I would want my children to be raised. They are active, constantly outside, eating good food, living in a beautiful place with the afore-mentioned friends and family, everyone knows everyone else's name in town, people watch each other's kids, they bring each other food when someone doesn't have any or runs out, and the kids respect authority and the adults in general (and don't mistrust them). And then there's that wave. That perfect right point wave that has forever changed the place - for better and for worse. For better because everyone's standard of living has gone up and for worse because of some of things that the kids are getting exposed to (and general cultural dilution) and the environmental impact. But the crazy dichotomy of a place like this is the perfect life the kids have until about the age of 18 and then the rough road ahead for many of them when they need to work. I mean everyone over the age of about 10 works in some capacity but all the men get their 16 and 17 year old girlfriends pregnant when they themselves are 18 or 19 and the prospects for work are pretty grim. They either have to leave or travel a long way for work. Or somehow try to make a living in town which is tough. There is middle ground somewhere between the lives we lead in the US where we have so many opportunities and access to information but where we constantly buy more and more crap, work too much, and don't know our neighbors and the life these people live where life is fantastic in so many ways (very pure) but everyone drops out of high school and has poor access to things like health care. I personally like both places and what they have to offer but I am lucky because I can live in both worlds if I choose to.