The Golden Child

As the first born male into a third generation Italian family, there’s an unwritten, unspoken rule that basically exists: whatever the kid wants, he gets. Growing up in this situation, you can imagine how cool it must have been. If I didn’t feel like eating those peas and carrots, they can be gone with a simple wave of the hand. Not in the mood for fish ever again—banished from the family freezer forever!

Of course, at ages 1-12, I really didn’t fully realize the power I had over my very anxiety ridden, people-pleasing, overprotective mom. But somehow, the teenage years brought things into view and suddenly, I found myself quickly getting ‘drunk with power’ and I began to enjoy the ability to bend and influence situations at a restaurant or at a party or in front of my friends. When the realization kicked in, the world became my oyster and I began to become more and more Machiavellian with each fulfilled request. Of course, you don't always get to win every battle of wills, but as the first born son, you pretty much win most of them. Well, you do if you’re me. My name is Anthony Soyle.

I know what you’re thinking: your last name doesn’t sound very Italian. True. (And frankly, that really bugged me once I became a teenager). It was a classic case of the guys at Ellis Island making a name change on the fly because they couldn’t understand my great grandparents’ accent. My great grandfather’s last name actually was Soglio (pronounce SOIL-yee-oh). The guys at the dock on Ellis Island apparently only heard the “soil” portion of the actual full last name and so we were dubbed Soyle from that day forward.

Apparently there were some advantages to a non-Italian sounding name years ago, according to my extended family. (As the first born male, you’re also often subjected to tons of stories about the old days by well intentioned grandparents, uncles, aunts and older cousins who waste their wisdom on first born males who typically tune out). My grandmother was no exception and constantly wanted to avail me of all her stories and her wisdom, so she told me how she used our non-Italian sounding last name to her advantage as a young woman. Way back when, she told me that the Germans were more apt to get factory work than other ethnic groups in upstate New York. (I guess they were the managers for the most part, back then). As a result, since her name sounded German to her employer, when she interviewed at the factory, they favored her application based on the sound of her last name. That’s how she got a factory job as a young married girl in New York. All I knew is that I wish they kept it like it was, in its full Italian-sounding glory. I hated the thought of my last name sounding like an “average American”, like Smith or Cooper. I thought it lacked character and was boring, but you could never convince my grandmother of that. I remember being 14 years old and longing to change it back to Soglio, but of course, that meant I’d have to wait awhile. I hate waiting. For anything.

Growing up, my family called me Rocky, because it was my favorite movie and I must have seen it on Netflix a million times. It was one of those movies about triumph and was full of the grit that I didn’t have, but always imagined I would acquire “when I got older”. And it didn’t hurt that Rocky’s last name sounded Italian. Balboa. Now that is unmistakably Italian! Like most teenagers, the occasional movie helped shape me in some small way. I guess Rocky helped me identify as an “Italian” and a guy who could prove everybody wrong. Something about the latter seemed to resonate within my very young soul. I’m not sure why, but it would be a theme that stayed with me for the rest of my life.

As I got older, my teenage years meant the usual: braces (not so cool), studying, teasing at school, hanging out with neighborhood friends, battling with chores and of course, manipulating my mom to get my own way in virtually every situation. You see, in my family, dad was what we call an overachiever. That’s the polite American version of a super successful guy who by all accounts, pretty much lives for his career at the expense of his family. And true to form, my dad was on the fast track to make sure he would cash in on his first million before anybody else.

I’ll never forget the night dad rolled up in his Lincoln and made sure that the truck behind him made its way in with mom’s brand new yellow and black Cadillac for her birthday. After the big reveal, it didn't take long to get bitten by the materialism bug. Less than a few months later, we moved from our modest little home in a rural town to a 40-room mansion in a very affluent new community. (You may recall that there’s only three of us). OF course, the size of our family unit was clearly of little consequence to my dad, whom I rarely saw. His focus was all about being the most successful guy on the planet. And by all accounts, he literally was—well, on the Planet Soyle anyway. His business acumen brought him into the local papers and soon he got some national acclaim for all his business intellect. He was a veritable captain of industry in his circle and he didn’t mind entertaining tons of people at the mansion to ensure that everyone knew it. Of course, there was a price for that as the only teenage son. One of the costs was being the co-host/waiter/bus boy/pool cleaner/grounds keeper. (Actually, the first role was momentary; it was the other roles that seemed to last too long for my taste). Perhaps that’s why wielding power over mom gave me a sense of freedom: yielding to dad’s orders so he could look good in front of company was pretty taxing ...when he was home. The great news for me (or so I thought) was that he was around so infrequently, he ended up just paying other people to do most of those other roles in a pretty short time frame. I learned early that if I did a really bad job, after he was done pontificating on what a good job looks like, he would eventually give up and pay somebody else to do it since it was clear that I "couldn't commit to anything". That’s what success did for him: it dulled his senses just enough that he ended up buying his way to a better result without any regard for the collateral damage it creates in the lives of others. Fortunately for me, I was very committed to piss poor workmanship with new every chore, so it didn’t take too long before dad was exasperated and the checks got cut. I was actually pretty proud of my program: it was a beautifully conceived plan and a clever guise of underachievement relative to any manual labor that was assigned to me. Shortly thereafter, reveling in my own clever approach, I was either on my way to a friend’s house or out and about on my bike, while mom had exactly what I wanted for dinner waiting for me upon my return. Life is good.

I have to admit, those years in the high end neighborhood were really cool. In fact, living in this new neighborhood had lots of perks: our neighbors had pools in their backyards (the in-ground kind with a real diving board—not the above ground ones like my cousins had), they owned their own tennis courts, they had boats, four wheelers, parachutes to sky dive with, planes, a new car every year ...and of course, tons of room in their respective own homes to play around. It was like living on one big playground, where most of the men were busy traveling around making their next million while their wives sat around and had coffee as they chatted about where they are taking their six to eight vacations next year. And the best part was that the kids all got a chance to pretty much do whatever they wanted as long as they didn’t interrupt the adults or drown in somebody’s pool. Looking back, it was almost surreal, since playing from house to house was better than anything that most kids could ever hope for. And when it came to Christmas, well, let’s just say that all those colliding adult male/father egos usually made for some massively cool gifts that were often so elaborate, they often didn’t fit under the tree! Needless to say, life was very different from most of the kids at school.

But it was not all bright lights and glamour, even on the sunny side of my street. There were some challenges tucked in there, especially at school. I was the shortest kid in the whole school (and known to be among the richest), so I really got teased along the way. I resigned myself to abdicating most of the gym stuff in favor of focusing on becoming the smartest guy in the school instead. In my mind, I was a going to become a “scholarly version of Rocky”, where grades never mocked me and studying didn’t entail trying to avoid being the last one picked for dodgeball. With each text book I finished ahead of time, in my mind, I was in the academic version of the meat freezer, just like Rocky, pounding out another assignment. Though the crowd laughed at my menial physical stature, I would eventually come out swinging with a flurry of A+’s and blow their minds. And in the proverbial ring of academic success, as I fight my way to victory, I would use my intellect to create a world in which they will ALL one day serve me as lowly employees in the empire that I will create in the working world.

At least that how it looked in my head.

It didn’t always silence the teasing at school from the more athletic rivals, and I was not a hit with the girls, but what I also developed was a really sharp tongue to fight back with by the time I was 14. It was risky move, but I had to prove them wrong..that I won't just slither away from the teasing any more. I decided that I would test it in front of an audience in the hall at third period, to protect my interests and hopefully avoid getting beat up. The great news was that it actually worked! When the smoke cleared, I could here the upperclassmen saying, “That short kid is pretty funny—he made the quarterback look like an idiot in third period.” Those were my “Rocky” moments that gave me some modicum of satisfaction, despite the teasing that persisted. But while they jeered, I studied and sharpened my mind while they worked on their bodies. And in my pursuit of intellectual excellence, I stumbled upon a book called The Magic Of Thinking Big. From that moment on, I started reading other books, like how to negotiate, how to speed read, how to read body language, the principles of neurolinguistic programming and how publicly speak with authority. It was my little “meat freezer” training approach to one day blitzing this place called high school, and I was going to prove them all wrong in due time. I could hear the theme from Rocky in my head as I learned from each new book and I couldn't wait to get back in the ring with the likes of all these people one day.

Of course, the majority of my time at the mansion was well, kinda like Shangri-La. My neighborhood friends and I all got along great and they really didn’t pay attention to what the school kids said. Our families all hung out and had fun on the weekends, so that affinity gave me a chance to recharge my emotional batteries from the blows that landed from school. Since we all lived in this little insulated world where our parent's income shielded us from how the rest of the world lived, we had a bond that transcended school. And of course, there was the family! As you might expect, all the Italian relatives made the rounds to one another’s homes for meatballs, pasta and sauce and invariably, the mansion was where they all gathered (that is, if dad decided to be home that Sunday afternoon and there was not a game he needed to watch on TV).

And of course, there was mom. Ahhh, my Italian mom. Whenever I got to a point where there was even a hint of displeasure around me, my very wishes were her command. When I was at home after school or on the weekends, I was damn near invincible. And all that positive regard made me even more dangerous, in one sense, since I felt invincible. I found myself speaking in a more vehement tone at times if things weren't to my liking. “I thought I told you no more peas and carrots on ANYTHING!” “What do you mean we’re out of sauce... How long will that take you to make?” “Look, I NEED that specific outfit...not the one you picked out!” That feeling has an intoxication all its own, since it moves you to test the limits of what is remotely reasonable. It’s a life force that radiates in your mind so strongly that the rest of the world is now forced to contend with your outlook. And my outlook was singularly focused on my own needs, year after year. It was a very passive aggressive approach to a parent. I wasn't a total brat in public however. I knew when and how to turn it on and dial it down. That was the fun of it. While the world saw a retreating short little nerd who appeared to be passive, the tiger that raged on the inside knew when to come out.

What was ironic during this upbringing is that what typically would appeal to most teens at this stage actually scared the crap out of me: drugs and alcohol. Maybe it was because I valued my one perceived weapon, my mind, such that I dared not risk it. Maybe it was because I hated even the thought of throwing up and all my friends who drank (as you might expect) ended their night with vomiting. Maybe it was because the fact that drugs were somehow “more illegal” in my own head that I was just frightened enough to avoid even trying them, let alone obtaining them. Now that I think of it, since everyone expected me to try those two vices, I guess I just wanted to prove them wrong.

The danger of being a rich kid who has been brought up without much parental discipline is that there are often no boundaries and no one creates the time (or has the guts, if you’re my mom) to confront you. In my case, my dad had the means to make whatever I did “go away” and I had the balls to continue to test the limits to see if he would continue to cut a check. From some speeding violations in my older cousins' cars to trying to slip out of school early, I had a blast ... and I got to know our family lawyer quite well early on. But in my mind, it was all a big game that I engineered for my own benefit and entertainment. I legitimately liked the idea of being cunning and clever and getting away with something new that was just enough outside of the norm that it was fun to try. And perhaps some the joy was in actually attaining it while most of the outside world simply presumed upon my small stature as the yardstick they used to measure my inability to achieve it. Sometimes, as they surveyed the results of one of my little schemes, I could hear them conjecture: “Nah. It couldn’t be Rocky. That golden boy? He’s just a little nerdy short kid. He doesn’t have that kind of guts to attempt that kind of a stunt. He's a bookworm, that kid.” And with each new plan I hatched that went unpunished (or in some cases, unnoticed), I had them all right where I wanted them. Little did they know that their disbelief in my ability to achieve all these little moves was actually setting the stage for more stealthy, bigger moves down the road. So I continued to hatch some more fun schemes in the shadows to entertain myself while I shined as the top in my class at 14 and again at 15 years old. I was beginning to now be known as the short kid in the Honor Society who comes up with the occasional witty line to fend off the insults of his high school peers. Even the doubters became believers in school and soon, no one verbally challenged me in public any more. The tide was slowly turning. And just like that, in my formative years, I became the Golden Child.