Becoming a caricature : part 1

“The world only exists in your eyes.
You can make it as big or as small as you want.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald

Patrick Johnson was a child of extraordinary capacities.  He began reading three months ahead of the rest of the children in his class and began to understand what he was reading almost immediately, a feat the some of his classmates still lacked in their college years. His parents looked upon this a one of their greatest accomplishments and his teachers beamed with pride as though it was they, not he, who had excelled above the others.  But Patrick was the kind of child that wore his intelligence with ease and joy.  There was no heaviness to his abilities and he openly shared his experiences the way that only a child can.  Because of this openness, the light within him lightened even the darkest of adult hearts.

The whole of his childhood was neither too much nor too little of any one particular thing or another.  He passed his weekdays indulging in education, the way a child that is not pushed is want to do, while finding every available moment to play with friends he believed would be a part of him for the whole of his conscious existence.  In these early years, his charm left him surrounded by a bubble of love and friendship.

By all accounts, apart from his intelligence quotient, he was the picture perfect child living a balanced and beautifully interesting childhood.   The road that lay before him promised to be full of anything but the status quo.