Dodger Pride and the New Competition

I have a system when it comes to my parents. I call my dad Roy once every two weeks and my mom Rita once every three weeks. I used to call Roy every week but, now that he’s getting on me about getting married and all, I feel an extra week of healing is needed. This week I had to call Rita, but I was really looking forward to speaking with her this time. It all had to do with a CD.

The last time Rita was in Nigeria, I told her to take pictures of the places she was building. I was tired of hearing her stories about it and wanted to see it. She always talked about the problems she was having and construction delays and… it just sounded like a complete mess. So she sent me a CD that had pictures of the places.

Rita Escobar

Side View

Construction of the next properties

I mean… that is amazing. Her properties look like they’re owned by a Columbian drug cartel. The finished one is an 8 unit building, and she’s building two more. Her plan was to build one for each of her kids, but she knows how disconnected we are with Nigeria. As a result, she said she may sell some of them if we don’t want to deal with Nigerian property management, which is 10 times worse than it is in America. As she continued to talk about it, I lost focus because I had an immense amount of pride growing in me. I was/am extremely proud of Rita. This whole time I thought she was building crap over there and getting scammed by construction workers, yet there she was building 8-unit buildings from scratch. I haven’t been this proud of her since the VCR day.

When I was a kid, my parents fought a lot. Most of the time it would get physical, with my mom on the losing end. I think I was 9 or 10 on VCR day, and I was reading a comic book on my bed—Silver Surfer’s 75th Anniversary issue. I started to hear the loud screaming from my parents that let me know a fight was underway. Then I heard the footsteps, as if one was chasing the other. Those footsteps always scared me as a kid, because usually those footsteps meant that one of them was coming to my room to kick my ass for something stupid I had done. After the footsteps, more screaming. Then the entry way door opened followed by a crash, as if something had broke. Once I heard them yelling in the hallway, my curiosity took over and I went to see what was going on, as they usually never yelled at each other in public. I went to the opened door and saw our neighbors standing in the hallway with broken machine bits on the floor. Apparently, my mom had chased him and threw our VCR at the back of his head. The cops and the ambulance were called, after which my dad decided to move out. I remember running back to my room and that uncontrollable smile came on my face. Rita had had enough and the tyranny of Roy was over. It was like the Berlin Wall coming down or the fall of Hosni Mubarak-- my very own Arab Spring. To this day, Roy still has the same big bump at the back of his head. It makes me smile every time I see it-- that sweet symbol of defiance.

I was proud of Rita. I could point to Roy’s bump and say, “I’m the son of the woman who did that!” Two decades later, I can point at her Nigeria properties and say, “I’m the son of the woman who built that!” It’s a sense of pride to see a woman who put herself through college while raising three kids and wiping old people’s asses as a home health aid for money to become a property owner/manager in two countries, Nigeria and America (property Chi). It’s the pattern of my entire family. Roy was a taxi driver and security guard before he became an accountant. Rex was a security guard before he got the job at Lehman Brothers. When I told everyone that I was doing security back in 1999, I remember them saying, “Well, now you’re part of the tradition.” Our family has a history of working menial jobs to get where they want to be in life, so I kinda felt like part of the club.

Rita Dodger. No matter how many times I get mad at that woman when she pisses me off, the anger goes away almost instantly because of who she is. She currently doesn’t make much money because she takes all the profits and puts it into the construction of the next property, and she also has to pay her lawyer who oversees the care and construction of the properties while she’s gone. She’s doing almost exactly what I’m doing right now. She even keeps it secret, just like I do. No one else in my immediate family really knows what she's doing over there. This pride translated into a renewed interest in December’s Nigeria trip. I now have an actual reason to go besides paying respects to grandma. Besides the pride, I felt that my whole competition is not only with Rex, but with my entire family. I want to see Roy’s properties when I’m there. I wanna see what we own. I wanna see where my parents grew up. I want… I can’t help but wanting to see everyone succeed that bears the Dodger name. My sister Rana and I don’t get along very well, but I would love to see her name on top of a building or as the owner of a big company. I don’t have to like you but, if you have my blood, you have to be better than everyone else. Family pride. It’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it?

P.S.: My competition is now with every member of my family. While I want to see them ridiculously successful, there's no question that I want to be the best out of them all. My pride may have increased, but my massive ego remains the same. And that's healthy competition. As far as my competition with Sha? Hmm. I'll figure it out somehow.