By Jose Dominguez, June 13, 2019 — I’m amazed about how an early experience can be so permanent and how at the same time, the person involved in it can be so distant.
When I was 7 years old, even being almost a total introverted kid, I loved to visit my neighbor friends. On this particular day, my mother gave me as a present, a Mickey Mouse clock. Oh, it was so neat! It surpassed all my worldly possessions which were some marbles, some plastic little trucks, and one ball. So happy I was with my MM clock that I decided to visit my friend Marino Rios who lived 2 blocks away. He was impressed about my clock and suddenly he went to his room and returned bringing a shoebox full of plastic toys and told me, “Pepe, I change you my toys for your clock, think about it.” Playing, for me, was more important than counting the time so I accepted. So proud, I immediately showed my mother the super acquisition and explained the big deal I just made and the fun those plastic toys will give me. “You have been robbed!” She responded impatiently, almost mad. “But it will give you a lesson of the value of things.” She explained to me a huge comparison of prices, money, dollars, and fairness. At the end, I felt more like a stupid kid than a happy kid. But later I felt that such experience was funny and I spoke about it freely.
Until one day 67 years later, I found Marino Rios again, now a prominent physician. Believing he would remember the Mickey Mouse of my infancy, I tried to make a deal to refresh his memory. He told me, “I have no idea what you are saying.” I looked at his face and he was uncomfortable being spotted and ended, “I think you are confusing the person. I will never take advantage of nobody—” specifically an innocent kid.