This kid who is growing up...

He looks forward to school. His parents are surprised. They think children hate schools. But, he does not want to miss classes even when ill. And he loves going out, meeting people. Surprising again, as he is no extrovert. He is very awkward with strangers, extremely self-conscious. He feels they are always comparing and secretly laughing at him. He has a morbid fear of being laughed at...even secretly. So he wants with all his heart to play, yet never really tries - he is sure they will laugh at him. Mother and father have always emphasized studies and trivialized sports. By the time he is old enough to discover his keenness to play, he is already a country man come to the city for the first time. This acute inferiority complex means that he often stands alone during lunch hours, watching the other kids play. And in the sports classes, he cuts a sorry figure. Once, when he was forced to play football by his sports teacher, he remembers the ball heading his way, and everyone shouting his name - he shut out the increasing thump of his heart, mustered all his strength and ran towards the ball, kicking it powerfully. Later, people told him he had missed the ball completely and it seemed like he almost got out of the way. Anyway, point is he is an underconfident, introverted, loner kid. Yet at heart, he is an extrovert. He loves school outings and school fights. When his mother sits him in the sun, outside his house, he looks at it and wonders. When he sees the sun, many people see the moon. And he is fascinated - he wants to travel and see places where there is moon, when his mother can see the sun here. He wonders if he can be at two places at the same time to see both. And he just goes on thinking like this. About Baker's street where Sherlock Holmes lived. About, hotdogs and hamburgers that the Hardy boys eat. About, aeroplanes and airports. Most of all, he thinks about snow. And about ships. Sailing quietly in the night, surrounded by infinitely stretching water on all sides. Weren't the early voyagers afraid of being on a ship - how were they sure, water ever ended and there was another shore? Ship, snow, sports - none of these are in his life and he lustsafter them. He wants all these and that keeps him going.One day, the underconfidence and complexes will be vanquished by his middle-class value system based on a need to succeed and he will become a superhuman. Or inhuman. There will be no snow for the snow will all melt. He will realize that timezones give jet lags. He will be sick of waiting at the airports. He will know that Sherlock Holmes didn't exist and neither do Hardy Boys. And that hotdogs and hamburgers are why American kids are fat. He will be far too smart for his own good. He will be an extrovert, yet really an introvert. He will dearly wish he falls ill so that he can bunk office. He will be a gym-freak, running for hours on a treadmill, terribly bored, yet unable to get off as if transfixed by the numbers ticking off calories from his body. Work will prepare him for the tedium of the treadmill and treadmill in turn will make him look forward to work. He will go out, get the world and become the world.