Junito: The Soccer Ninja & A Painful Execution

Well, the good news is the bad news is the good news. On the plus side, I no longer have to watch my back. The soccer ninja is dead. On the negative side, Junito cannot seek out his counsel in person. And on the more negative side, the soccer ninja extracted one final act of revenge against me.

No, my friends, murder is not the worst of fates – murder is the mere acceleration of timeframe, the fastforwarding of an alarm clock. And for all we know, God may have a far more cruel fate just around the corner for our enemies. No, The soccer ninja had the last laugh in a typically devlish and carefully planned matter: he appointed me the executor of his estate.

Now, I know your thoughts – cool. A paid trip to Japan, a few court appearances, a few letters, all so simple. Wrong. Probate in the absence of a will is a nightmare of paperwork and infighting. Contrary to my assumptions, the soccer ninja did not pass his Friday and Saturday nights in a Buddhist shrine meditating. No, based on the number of alleged illegitimate children who have come forward for a slice of the pie, the soccer ninja’s stealth, cunning, and deception extended to his love life.

Things at the homefront also posed problems. Junito, like Ruud Van Nistelrooy and other great forwards, is a scavenger in many respects. We recently purchased a large box of delicious juice boxes for him and his older sister, but after a few days, the boxes began to disappear at an unusually accelerated rate. No, this was not China-cooked books-economic growth fast, but still, 4 a day? Unusual.

Then, one night, and night for the parents of toddlers means after 7:30pm, I heard a stirring in the bathroom. I entered to find Junito not carefully calibrating his plastic inodoro, but rather hiding juice boxes behind toilet paper rolls under the sink. The Missus got enraged. I laughed. Then she got mad at me, and I pretended to be mad.

Ever the optimist, I immediately saw the application to soccer. Junito’s cunning can only lend a hand when, at the 80th minute, a tired defender must conserve energy and a precarious one goal lead. Could Junito share? Ha. Did people ask Romario to make sideways passes? And even though Romario, blah, played for Barcelona, I definitely see that same “sketchy-elusiveness” in Junito. Selfishness can be a virtue in certain situations.

So, the Missus did not want me to jet to Japan for the probate and work, well, work already thinks I am crazy. A game of carousel-bluff ensued, but I won the contest of employee-employer wills. But the lack of a properly executed will in Japan made matters incredibly confusing. Still, rather than fight the fight, I let all the little bastards have a slice of the pie. I was sad to see my sensei’s shrine scoured over by rats, but I had little legal means or will to club back the horde.

After two weeks of wrangling, I found a decent real estate broker to sell the temple and headed back to the US of A. I thought I had finished my duty and could avoid the wrath of another dead spirit. Needless to say, when I immediately saw a missed phone call from Japan upon landing in LAX, I assumed the worse. But I was pleasantly surprised. The broker had found an old book with little resale value. Intrigued, I agreed to paid shipping to glance at this text.

I won’t lie – I did not exactly run to the mailbox every evening in anticipation of this tome’s arrival. When the package finally came, it sat on my kitchen counter for a few days. Finally, one night, I heard shuffling in the kitchen and entered, suspecting to catch Junito red handed. I did, kinda. But Junito did not have a fistful of juices, no, he had the package in his hands.

He asked me, in his heavily Nicaraguan Spanish (from the madre‘s side), “Que es, Papy Elliott?” I smiled, opened the package, and Junito’s eyes glowed like fireflies. So did mine. The cover was unlike anything I’d ever seen – think really cool leather, but in the ancient tome sense, not the deviant San Francisco don’t-believe-in-Jesus young professional nightclub scene.

I opened the book, but only saw blank pages. Junito grabbed the book from me and tossed the pages, smiling and laughing. The reading of text stills holds second place to seeing pictures and coloring at this stage in Junito’s rigorous academic studies. Junito stopped at the middle of the book, intrigued. I took the tome from him and saw a single word, written oddly in English. I smiled to myself, let out a chuckle, and thanked my master for one last lesson to be imparted upon Junito.

“Share”