Expectations

Stephen Malkmus V. Santos had his life planned out for him the moment he was conceived. As soon as he could sit, he would be carried to his high baby chair in front of an upright paino to learn the scales. He would learn to sing even before he could talk. The first sentence he would ever utter would be the opening line of the first epic novel he would ever write.

In his pre-school years, he would not be babysat by electronic gadgets. He could use electronic gadgets all right, but only if they were of the ProTools variety, and would allow him to engineer his own unique electronic musical sound.

He would be well-versed in at least five international languages before he was out of his diapers, and that would be aside from the native dialects of his parents: Tagalog and Kapampangan.

Before entering grade school, he would brush up on some Political Theory and a smattering of Pre-Law during his playtime. He would sharpen his pronunciation skills by participating in debates against University students during the weekends. During semestral breaks when there were no Univerisity students to debate against, he would pass his time by painting his future masterpiece.

Such indecisions as to whether he would take flying commercial planes for a major airlines company, or play as the star centre forward of a top international federation football team as his main pastime would not be a problem, since he would have good time management skills enabling him to do both.

If these all seem too much to expect for a yet unborn child to accomplish, these are actually but a few of the more commonplace entries one is likely to find if one were to browse the Expectations Booklet his father is preparing for him. With the first of the drafts started in secret as early as his father's bachelor years, the Expectations Booklet contains a list of milestones he is sure his future child will, at some precise predetermined future time, achieve.

In its present form, the Expectations Booklet is a six-inch-thick legal-sized office binder, called such because on its binder spine is hand-written in black marker a simple description of its general contents: "EXPECTATIONS". Within are a couple of hundred pages of legal sized bond paper, filled with almost no margins with the very small handwriting his father is known for.

There are two columns for every page; one for the "life goal"—as his father likes to call them—and the other the target date the goal is to be achieved. Once each expectation is met, his father will simply strikeout the entire entry and will be ready to move to the next milestone.

For now, of course, none of the entries are struck-out. In fact, his father is in a late stage final revision, trying to add a couple more pages of goals that aren't included in earlier drafts. This late stage revision, similar to how the booklet has been started, is also being done in secret—that is, unknown even to the future child's mother.

They say babies can hear and comprehend even in the womb. If so, Stephen's father is using every opportunity when his wife is asleep to read to the yet unborn child writings from his Expectations list. In the middle of the night, he sneaks the thick office binder into the room, and whispering through each of the items in the booklet, he calls Sthephen by name and assures him that he will indeed achieve.