The Six-lined
racerunner
A Memoir
As the son of an Air Force Sergeant, Steve was fortunate to spend four years at the Air Force base in Torrejon, just outside Madrid, not long before the generalissimo's demise. The one constant source of interest for Steve, in all the fascinating places he traveled in his family's Peugeot, was the tiny reptiles that skittered about in the warm sunshine, daring him to catch them.
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Royal Oaks, a housing complex near the capital city, bustled with the ceaseless arrivals and departures of Air Force families who formed a tight-knit, supportive community in the midst of the Spanish population that often derided GIs, and which had little affection for the U.S. government. The patches of wilderness interspersed between their homes supported a vibrant reptile community, so Steve and his friends formed a lizard-catching league, descending into the sandy gullies almost daily to pursue the elusive six-lined racerunner.
In this unusual setting, Steve underwent a transition from a meek young boy, riddled with self-doubt, to a pre-teen with an audacious dream – to become a physician. The journey began with an incomparable fifth-grade teacher, the unstinting support of a demanding father, the camaraderie of two loyal friends, and the inspiration of the elusive lizards they avidly pursued. The story chronicles the challenges, successes, failures, and accomplishments Steve experienced as he evolved from pupil to scholar in the final year of elementary school, acquiring a small measure of self-confidence and establishing the foundation for his eventual entry into the medical profession.
“This was a transformative year in my life. This was the year I began to develop my own self-confidence and break out of my shell. Most importantly, this was the year I learned to love biology by catching lizards in central Spain, and that passion became the foundation for my desire to become a doctor later in life."
– Dr. Steven Orenbaugh | Author & Anesthesiologist
We had long fantasized about finding and capturing the rarest and fastest of the lizards, the six-lined racerunner. These were legendary in our eyes. Few of the boys in Royal Oaks had even seen one, let alone caught one...
“Stop,” I mouthed, frantically signaling to my friend, Mark Godwin, to stay where he was. Black-haired, dark-eyed, and slight, he was standing on the other side of a small collection of gnarled shrubs, just off the path I was standing on. I held my finger to my lips. It was a tense situation, one that called for stealth and delicacy. He froze in his tracks, brown eyes peering intently at me.