The day I Defeated the Little King

Some small events end up defining our whole life

I must have been nine or ten years old.

At this time, my world revolved around the family of my mother’s best friend. She was married and had two children, and her son was the same age as me. This boy, however, had a very evident characteristic: he was extremely spoiled. Very handsome and intelligent, his parents spent most of the time praising him, to the point of “damaging” the boy (his future, unfortunately, was bleak, perhaps partly because of his parents’ behavior, but this is not the subject that we are discussing today). In short, the boy was treated like a little king, and because of this, he thought he was a little king.

So much flattery affected me, too. In a way, I thought he was “better” than me; after all, I was not the target of much praise. And okay, I never considered the treatment he received undervalued. I liked him and was proud to be his best friend. But I felt a level below him. Mainly because, in addition to the compliments, his parents were wealthy, they gave him beautiful things all the time, and my mother struggled to provide me with the basics.

Once the scenario is established, let’s go to the event. During the holidays, we — me, him, his parents, his younger sister, and my mother — traveled to Guarujá, a well-known beach on the coast of São Paulo, the state where I live. Unfortunately, we only got a couple of days of sunshine. Soon after, it started to rain and never stopped. We hadn’t been out of the house for four or five days, at a time when houses had far fewer resources than today, let alone beach houses. If I’m not mistaken, we didn’t even have a television! Then, to make matters worse, at the end of an afternoon, the light was over. The five of us stayed inside the dark house with nothing to do.

It was then that the boy’s father decided to invent a game. The three of us — me, my best friend, and his sister — would have a drama contest. They would create a theme and pass it on to us, and we should improvise a scene. Each one would do the scene alone; after all, it was a contest. After the introductions, the judges — their parents and my mother — would grade us. And one of the three would win the title of “Best Actor.”

(Very strange in the seventies, no? Whoever lost won nothing… On the contrary, he was humiliated by the winner, and his parents did not prevent this behavior.)

The themes of the scenes were emotions. If I’m not mistaken, three emotions, each of us did three scenes. The first was “joy;” the second was “grace,” and the third, “terror.” I don’t remember what the scenes were like; I only vaguely remember that I used the candlelight in an inventive way in the horror scene.

And then, we went to the verdict.

I was already prepared to lose. After all, my friend was one step above all mortals. I imagined that, perhaps, my mother would vote for me. But that he would win the title.

He didn’t win.

To everyone’s surprise, the three were unanimous in saying that my performance had been — by far — the best.

My best friend was PISSED. He fought with his parents, with his sister, with me, and even with my mother. And he went to his room to cry alone.

His parents, however, did not follow. And they reaffirmed that I deserved to win.

Up to that point, I never imagined that he would ever become an actor. It was never my ambition. But as the presentation was so remarkable, and the reaction of his parents, who never contradicted their son, was so strong, the phrase “You have a flair for being an actor” started to resonate in my head.

It resonated so much that, twenty years later, I debuted on television doing one of the best miniseries in the history of Brazilian TV.

And it all started because of a rainy afternoon in Guarujá…