While visiting my parents in Laguna last Sunday, Frances and I decided to get some fresh air and stroll around the village. The sun was just about to set and the cool afternoon breeze made it a perfect time for a nice walk.
It’s only been three years since I moved out of my parent’s house but the unfamiliar houses and faces in the neighborhood made it feel like it was a bit longer than that. When my family moved in from Navotas to San Pedro Laguna back in 1988, we were one of the first occupants of the village. I remember how everything was just so new and how clean the streets and houses were. Now it just seems so crowded and worn out. Even the road seemed a lot narrower.
I saw a few elderly faces I recognized and greeted. “Tek, how are you? Is that your daughter! My gosh, she is soo adorable! Is she really your daughter?” Years of having a prettier sister to be compared to has conditioned me to nonchalantly come up with witty comebacks for comments like that. When I’m told things like, “You know, your sister looks nothing like you” I tell people I got mixed up in the hospital when I was born. But I’ve gained a lot more confidence now. When people say, “That can’t be your daughter, she’s too pretty!” my rebuttal would be, “Of course she’s my daughter, that’s what top caliber sperm does to an egg cell!”
My feet took me to my old school, which was just a mere two minutes away from where my parent’s place was. It was closed of course, being a Sunday. But the security guard was kind enough to let Frances and I in when I said I was an alumnus and lived just inside the village.
It was a bit surreal walking inside the empty campus with my little daughter holding my hand. It’s been thirteen years since my last day in high school, but of course it’s memories like that that stays with you no matter what. The school, much like the village outside has undergone a lot of changes. But the entire ambiance of the place still feels like the early nineties. The empty hallways and corridors were still echoing with memories that I could almost imagine bumping into my old self.
I was giving Frances the grand tour. “This is daddy’s old classroom in freshman high. That there is probably the same chair where I used to tightly tie your Godfather Jon’s bag as a daily prank.” We passed by the old Staff Room, which used to be where friends and I hung out after class hours, “Ahhh yes. Inside there is where your mommy said YES to daddy back in 1991.” We walked up the second floor and saw the third floor corridor that leads to the old Social Hall. “I’ll share with you a little secret. That up there Frances, is where daddy and mommy both found out that they didn’t know how to kiss. Still they tried and ended up laughing at each other. Hehehe.” We saw the old Citizen’s Army Training Head Quarters where Jon and I used to play with the school’s PA system making bogus announcements like, “Paging the owner of the black car, plate number so and so, please proceed to the parking lot immediately. We swear it was an accident!”
If people ask me what point in my life would I love to go back to I would definitely say, “Give me a big tube of Clearasil and take me back to 1990!” I feel sad for people who didn’t enjoy their high school. It was the best time of my life! I know it’s no cool teen movie script but I never had it so good with the way things were back then. It was a time when every song on the radio was good and no one wrote suggestive novelty songs like “Jumbo Hotdog” or “Bulaklak”. It was a time when people attended parties to have fun dancing and mass hysteria was just a matter of the DJ spinning the extended remix of When in Rome’s “The Promise” or The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven”. It was a time when correctly spelling words mattered and no one substituted the English word “ME” for the Tagalog word “AKO”. It was a time when pornography was only in smut magazines and Betamax tapes, which only campus bullies had access to. It was a time when you can be ostracized for publicly holding your girlfriend or boyfriend’s hand. And it was a time when local T.V. was actually entertaining and less annoying.
Things were simpler back in high school too. Back then my biggest concern when waking up late in the morning was trying to find a way to sneak inside Mrs. Dilla’s first English class without being given a lengthy lecture on punctuality. Back then twenty pesos would be more than sufficient to get me through the day, and a total of a hundred pesos was enough for drinks and movie tickets for two. Back then I was able to hang around with the people who understood me the most five days a week. And back then all Cathy and I had to worry about was keeping our relationship a secret from the Citizens Army Training Commandant, lest he finds out and demotes me from being the CAT First Battalion Training Officer and gives Cathy a hard time being a Cadet Officer Candidate Course trainee (which later happened anyway).
Time flew by so fast that before I realized it was already getting dark and Frances was starting to get cranky about getting her milk. So I decided that it was enough nostalgia for one day and we headed back to the entrance.
As we were on our way out, I saw an old bench outside one of the classrooms with the words “Fuck You” boldly scribbled on it with white chalk. Good thing Frances was just two years old, I’d hate to imagine her reading it and asking me what it meant. Kids would ask the most innocent and difficult questions. I remembered what Holden Caulfield said in Catcher in the Rye, “If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the 'Fuck you’ signs in the world. It's impossible.” I wanted to erase it with my hand and say I made a difference with that one, but I didn’t want to get my hands dirty as I was carrying my child.
As I was walking back to my parent’s house, I was thinking how I’ve come a long way from where I was back in Senior high. How my life and my daily responsibilities have significantly changed. And mostly, how glad I was being able to spend my High School life the way I did. After seeing the graffiti on the bench, I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of world Frances would probably have to deal with when it’s her turn to be in high school. But I suppose it’s too far off into the future and I have better things to worry about for now, like milk and diapers.
I was about halfway home when I saw one of my dad’s former officemates coming out of her house. I greeted her and seeing how she was trying to recognize me I re-introduced my self. “Oh! Hey Tek! Nice to see you again, didn’t recognize you with the long hair! Is this your daughter! Look at her she’s so cute! How on earth did you get to have such a lovely looking baby like that?” Here we go again, some things just never change.
