Egomaniacal // Biography

The Making Of A Genius

It was 630 p.m., Elnora P. Grepo's face was twisted in pain. She was at Dra. Salamanca Hospital in Cavite City, with her husband beside her. She had been going through labor for two hours, and her husband, Roberto A. Grepo, whose heart was beating a mile every second, seemed to be doing no good in trying to calm her down. They were both new to this. They have been married for only a year and it was going to be their first child.

Huffing and puffing and burning red, she was taken to the emergency room after another thirty minutes of torment. Her husband was left outside, with face ashen. Finally, the doctor's booming voice as he announced, "It's a healthy baby girl" put an end to their anguish. The tiny baby girl--so tiny you could fit her in a shoe box--of first-time parents Nora and Obet was born on the 21st of September, 1984 at exactly 730 p.m.

The baby girl was christened Carla Regina Pena Grepo--Carla meaning strong and Regina meaning queen--four months later. Contrary to her Christian name, she was quite sickly during the first few months (her baptismal was prepared in a hurry by her parents after being informed of the possibility that she might not live long enough to be christened), but turned out to be a precocious tot during her toddler years. It amused people that the tiny girl, with chinky eyes and rosy, fair skin (which to her dismay, she somehow lost over the years.) quickly acquired new words which she spoke audibly and talked to people in complete sentences, conversing with them and acting as if she were a grown-up. She liked being the center of attention, and would always sing the 'Alphabet Song' and count 1-20 whenever meeting new people. And she was only a year old.

Her fondness for reading was evident during her early years--her favorite "pasalubong" from her daddy were fairy tale books. She went to nursery school at three as a "saling-pusa," because the teachers thought she was too young. Her mom enrolled her because she was so earnest to start school and was always trying to imitate everything her older cousins did. It was the only way to keep her from exasperating her mom. But her parents received a pleasant surprise in March when their little daughter brought home a letter saying that Carla was to receive the first honors in class.

She skipped kindergarten and went to prep school, and then had to take an exam before getting accepted into first grade because she was only five. She passed and was consistently in the honor roll until she graduated from elementary as the class valedictorian.

In her elementary days, she was the geeky type who strictly conformed to the rules and whose nose was always buried in a Nancy Drew, Bobbson Twins, Sweet Valley Kids or Sweet Valley High pocketbook, and sometimes Sidney Sheldon paperback novels she'd find lying around in her parents' room.