AS TOLD TO BC PIRES
My name is Curtis Gopie and I am an X-ray technician. The old English term is radiographer.
Gopie is G-o-p-i-e. The rich Gopees have the double “e.”
I come from San Juan – or, as people in San Juan like to say, “Sah Woh.”
As Denyse says, “I was born here, I grow here – well, when I had hair – and I stay here!”
I was an only child and my parents, Ena and Basdeo Gopie, particularly my mother, were very protective.
She would have all my friends come over to our house, to keep an eye on me. But also to judge my friends.
She would make sandwiches, drops, cupcakes, so all the children were happy to come to my house because they know they getting juice. So I had nice boy days.
I was nine years old when I found out I was adopted.
I was outside – and you know it always have a fast neighbour – and she said, “You know, that lady is not your mother? A lady who used to come here, that’s your mother.”
And I’m like, “What craziness you telling me?”
I was very close to my mother – and when I say “mother” and “father,” I mean my adoptive parents. I knew who my (biological) parents were, but the love, respect and honour of parenting goes to Ena and Basdeo.
Mummy and Daddy, married over ten years, couldn’t have kids.
At the market one day, my mother jokingly said to my (biological) mother, “Give me the baby, nuh, he so nice!”
And I’m still nice by the way, eh!
During the week, she came and asked if she could leave me with them. My father said, “No, no, no! If you want to leave the child, you have to sign papers! You can’t leave the baby and come back for the child.”
So they went through the whole adoption process, social worker coming to visit the home and all of that.
I’m at peace with my (biological) parents, but my mother and father are Ena and Basdeo.
My parents had a true love story.
My mother was a hefty woman, and my father loved fat women. She always said, “If you see your father with a skinny woman, don’t worry. But if you see him with a fat woman, come and tell me!”
When the Central Marketing Agency offered my father the job of foreman mechanic, he was ready to turn it down, because of his lack of education.
My mother said, “Bring home the book!”
And she studied with him and taught him and he (became) the master mechanic for government vehicles.
My father tried to get me into the auto repair trade, but I hated it!
So I end up having to spend money to service my car now.
I always said if I had the fortune of having half the love relationship that I saw my parents had, I’d literally be a happy man for the rest of my life.
I’m presently divorced and single. I have two daughters (from previous relationships).
[caption id="attachment_1034752" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Curtis Gopie photographed at his Port of Spain office. - Mark Lyndersay[/caption]
Life prepares you most times, but we don’t realise it at the time.
I went to an Adventist primary school. I passed for Malick Senior Comprehensive. But my father insisted I had to go to a private Adv
