BIG BROTHER AT THE AGE OF 27

At the end of September, 1969, my life had dramatically changed in more than one way. Without my mom, I did not have a family, since in many ways she was my whole family. I still had my father, of course, but since I was 12, he had been a distant figure in my life. True, I used to see him and he used to see me intermittently, and it was clear to me he was the head of our family, but he was not the father mentor, the father you want to imitate as you see him act, simply because he was physically and emotionally absent most of the time and his temper was always putting a barrier between his children (especially the boys) and himself. Besides, it wasn’t much clear to me at the time, but I was kind of vaguely aware of his rudeness with mom, a rudeness that was confirmed only recently when I got a written statement from my sister Florcita who was an eye witness of it. Still, I can say without fear of being mistaken, that I loved him and that I respected him without necessarily admiring him.
It was my sister Lilita, married to Lolo, the good looking man who had been a gigolo in his young years, but who became a model of a husband, a model of father and a model of a man after he married my sister, who “adopted” me as her son and gave me a new family, a family where I was given (o maybe I took it by myself), the role of a “big brother”.
Lilita and Lolo had five children, four boys and one girl. The oldest son, Leonardo, who was only nine years younger than me, was living in the US and had met, fell in love with, and decided to live together with the first and only sweetheart of his live, Ann, whom he married later and had four children with. The second child in Lilita’s family was Lilia Lucrecia (“Chachita”), who was one year younger than her big brother, the third child, Milton, was born in late 1954. Freddy, their fourth child was born in 1956, and their fifth and youngest child, Polo was born in 1957. So, at the age of 27, I became Lilita and Lolo’s “oldest child”. By the time, I had already gotten a certain reputation within the family, as a hard working and clear looking forward young man and Lilita told me she was happy to see me as the role model for her own children.
As I came back from Mexico and was warmly received in Lilita’s place, I can’t say who, of the five adopted siblings, gave me the nick name of “the powerful one” (“el poderoso”) with which they all have known me since. My new siblings promptly and happily adapted to the idea that I was one more in the family, but they all showed me the respect and consideration due to an older brother. They lived in a three bedroom apartment in those days, so I shared a room with two of my nephews, but at the same time Lilita and Lolo were building a new and bigger home at the Kennedy subdivision, a new middle class neighborhood nearby the School of Economics of the U of G. to which I came back in October 1969. A couple of months later we moved to the new house, where I shared a nice and spacious room with my nephew Freddy, 14 years younger than me, who by the time was one of the best ping pong players in Guayaquil. As a soccer fan that I always was, I used to take Freddy to watch the games in the nearby stadium, and, as for his own account, that is why he became an EMELEC (the best soccer team in the country) fan in a household where everybody else was a fan of the wrong team (Barcelona). As Freddy grew up and later on he got married, he had three children; all of them became fans of EMELEC. Freddy Jr., his first son, who is a successful CPA and works for a Public Accounting Firm near Philadelphia, has lived in the US for many years, he is now in the process of becoming a lawyer, but continues to be an EMELEC fan just as much as when he was a little kid and went to watch the games with his father. Good for him!
It was by this time that I bought my first car, a 1965, green, German Volkswagen Bug, which suddenly propelled me to the “upper class” of students at the U, and entered a “club” of the most looked up young people in the U campus at the same time. After all, I was young, not bad looking, had a great job, and was one of those privileged - one out of every 50 young students - who was driving his own car thru the streets of Guayaquil. My own girl’s harvest season had started, and it made me feel like the old Colombian song says: “the girls’ harvest never ends”.
Fanny and I were dating on and off, but neither she nor I was taking it very seriously. Fanny because she was not convinced that a man eight years her elder would be someone she’d like to seriously date with, and I was not ready to seriously date anyone because I still felt “not ready” for it for two main reasons, (1) The phantom of Anita was still floating in my mind, and I was really not willing to commit myself to a relationship of significance until that ghost was off my mind, and (2),I liked and enjoyed the way things were going out there with a quasi permanent “harvest of girls”. Still, I did not want to break up with Nena because I really liked her, and she was like “first among equals” as the opportunities with other girls multiplied.
A “ride home” to some of the girls at the U always became a great opportunity to flirt and I did not miss many of them. Friday night partying became an invariable part of my routine, so much so that in various opportunities my new “mom” Lilita, politely but firmly warned me about the risks of driving and drinking. Thank God, I never had an accident, though I remember several times arriving home late in the night (and sometimes early in the morning) and staying asleep in the car, till someone woke me up in the morning and sent me to bed. That was certainly not one of the “tutoring” lessons I was supposed to give my younger siblings and still feel a bit embarrassed when we talk about
School was really not a problem since most of the subjects I was taking were just a repetition of what I had already taken in NYC; however, as Pepe Garcia had told me, I needed to pursue the local school “diploma” as it would help me officially registering as an auditor, which was a requisite the Firm needed to comply with. In fact, my work required a lot of travelling within the country, which did not allow me to attend classes for relatively long periods of time, but that was not a problem because attendance was not a requisite at the U, but exams were, and I was always ready for them. I was always at the top of my class.
In November 1969, we started what the auditors used to call the “preliminary audits” in all of our clients. They consisted basically in reviewing and updating the policies and procedures of the companies and testing Balance Sheet and P & L Statement’s balances as of a preliminary closing date which was normally the closing of one of the last three months of the calendar year prior to December. The idea behind this work was to have most of the detail work done before the closing of the calendar year, to allow us for a fast completion of the full audit as soon as possible after December 31, and be able to issue the “Auditors Report” expressing an “opinion” on the reasonability of the Financial Statements of our clients before the end of March.
In my next posting: IN THE FAST TRACK TO SUCCESS

IN THE FAST TRACK TO SUCCESS