Go Figure

My brother has a talent for figuring things out. Not a skill, mind you. A talent.

When we were kids in Manila, we always heard about how the Japanese would give their children transistor radios and have them break it apart and put it together again. The rationale was that if they could put the radio back in working order, they'd have the ability to build a better radio. This was in the 70's, of course. The dawn of Sony and Toyota. Well, my brother was not a Japanese child but he did just that. He tinkered. With everything. So much so, that now he seems to have some magical-miraculous ability about him that can figure anything out. Sometimes, I would even swear that he can fix anything just by looking at it. Case in point: the CD player in my car had been broken for maybe about six months. Lazy me, I never got around to having it fixed. And then my brother came for a visit. In the car, he picked up the faceplate of that said CD player, and with his bare hands (no joke!), tweaked and twakked. Voila! It worked like new!

So it happened that one day, my sister's toddler got locked in their bullet-proof SUV. With the keys! I guess it was one of those ultra-safety, kidnap-proof type of setups. At any rate, nobody was able to break into that car. My sister, in tears, did not know what to do. The cops were called, nothing; the marines were called, nothing; the MP's (military police) were called, nothing. Finally, they called the prison to send over the Philippines' "number one" felon known for his skill at picking locks, still nothing. Finally, my brother came. Two minutes flat and my niece was back in her mama's arms! How's that for talent?

If you ask him how he does it, I don't think he could give you an answer. It's not a magic trick or shortcut he learned from any book. It's a talent he was born with, this inclination to tinker and ability to figure things out. Maybe one day someone should try and figure him out.