I was never a Promil Kid. I was never on the cover of a newspaper or a magazine. All I knew was that my parents believed in me.
Growing up, I always felt like I was on the verge of greatness. I was not exactly the most outstanding student. I was never No. 1 (and to be honest, often not even No. 2), but I was usually somewhere up there.
So you could say greatness wasn’t my gift, but the potential for it. But now I think that is somehow worse.
Proto-iPad kid
In preschool, I think what made me stand out was my unusual worldliness for someone who was not even five. If iPad kids surprise you nowadays with their ability to name country capitals and their uncanny accents that sound too close to Peppa Pig, that was me before it was “trendy.”
I would talk to my parents’ peers about Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco thanks to 5 am reruns of Scooby-Doo — which I was already up for, since I had to travel from Cavite to Las Piñas to school daily.
In elementary school, they would ask me to recite Greek Gods, their Roman counterparts, and the words born from their names.
