"A Champion Still"
John Guarino
A Champion Still
It has been many years since I saw the man. I often wonder what has become of him. He is probably gone. And unfettered by the trappings of this world that can snatch away the dignity of a person, he is free to re-find the greatness robbed from him by life’s relentless attempts to defeat us. Our accomplishments delicately placed on the mantle of our life for the world to see, only to be snatched away by an unforgiving world that will not tolerate even the slightest lack of diligence. He is free now, his spirit is noble again. Soaring as God intended before the world took from him his title. He is a champion once more.
But what became of the boy? Was the street sage correct? Was the boy special? Or was he just another of the masses, special only because he was on State Street on a summer night, and a homeless man noticed him. He was everything the soothsayer said and more! A child of amazing thought. His intellect trapped in a mind that was too advanced to communicate in ways as rudimentary as reading and writing. The rest of us struggled to know his thoughts, hindered by the imperfection of our ability to understand him. Our tools to accommodate him were inadequate. Our teachers lost to understand him. But he had patience with us. He bided his time until he found those who could understand him, and under their wing the genius of the little fighter was revealed. The written word that so often scoffed him as a boy, now the weapon he uses to make the world see his heart. Oh, the world tried. It beat at him like a tide, a daily attempt to force him into a place where he would no longer be exceptional. But he would not relent. He fought with everything he had, until he emerged at the other side…victorious. All those years ago he touched the life of a homeless man and made him walk a little taller, remembering the greatness of a life gone bye. He touches my life every day, and I walk a little taller, knowing he is in the world, being himself, and being my son. He battled the world and, although not unscarred, he remains undefeated. A champion still.
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