hopscotch: The Introduction

I have hopscotched through many countries and many lifestyles: studying,working, partying, marrying, parenting and now, grandparenting and cruising through retirement.

I don't think any reading of my horoscope or Zodiac sign would have predicted that. Given the pattern of life followed by my grandparents, parents and my nine older siblings, I should have been a very conservative Catholic and lived all my life in Trinidad within a few miles of the ancestral home

But without my being much aware of it, a lot of different hands were drawing the lines of this hopscotch game into which I have thrown my marker.

My parents, brothers and sisters were all very enterprising and had taught themselves to be very competent in their fields. They were also very adept at practical and mechanical things, such as maintaining their cars. I was like them, but I also had a strong inclination towards reading books and other academic activities. My oldest brother, his patience sometimes stretched by my clumsiness when, as a last resort he'd call me to help him with some mechanical task, would address me as "Shakespeare".

As "Shakespeare" I got to do the chores where I couldn't do much damage, like washing non-precision car parts with kerosene. I began to dislike grime and smelly, oily fluids that were impossible to wash from my hands.

I was further nudged towards a more academic kind of life when a childhood scourge laid me low for some months just at adolescence, preventing me from running around with my pals. Physical activities were limited for some months after that.

A line was being drawn more sharply as I went through High School, succeeding very well in my exams and liking every moment of it. University was beginning to become a goal. But there would be no local university in Trinidad for many years. University meant going overseas to the UK or the USA.

                                            University College Dublin

Given that most of my High School teachers were Irish clerics, and that there was a dark legend that most locals who had gone to the UK to study had "lost their Faith", a cause of great gloom among their families, I, and my parents chose Ireland rather than England for my University education.

Up to that time I wouldn't have guessed that that line was part of a hopscotch pattern. It was supposed to be just one straight line that led to Dublin then back to Trinidad.