NIELb0x.ph

The Boy Who Never Learned

a real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world looks out.                                    ---Walter Winchill

he was known among the young and old folks alike as Danny Dimatuto. Actually, the name was coined by his classmates in Banahaw Elementary School long after Danny Dimatuto dropped out of the first grade. When these classmates were in grade four, a teacher assigned them to read the story of an old man who never got tired of his work-fashioning clogs out of a scrap wood-that he had it inscribed on the door of his shop his attitude toward his trade: Never work and never will. They vigorously debated over what word to substitute fror work and with their puny efforts came up with Never work and never will. Thus started Danny's sobriquet di matuto.

Among the street urchins, Danny Dimatuto's name evoked an image of a queer hydrocehalus, a peculiarly robust boy whose shoulders sagged as if from an invisible burden. His face was especially amusing with his thick underlip that held the mouth perpetually agape so that flies were said to have travelled in and out of it in sheer delight and freedom. For this ubiquitious pack of kids who made it their business to be in the Danny Dimatuto's face conjured everything that was funny in life.