Life does not take you seriously. You will live a sorrowful one if you chart it, work to achieve your dream, forgetting that which matters most : fun, friends, experiences. After all, we are all sojourners. In this existence, nobody comes out alive.
My kids may view my generation as way backward, and low-tech. That I may accept. But I won’t exchange the joys that “patintiro”, swimming in the river, and hide-and-seek bring for the digital games.
Ah there is always a special place in my heart the clear waters of the river in our barrio.That was where I escaped from my elementary classes to swim with my friends. Even when my father would let me kneel for hours as punishment, I still escaped classes just to swim.
It is in that river that I learned how to fish, and was scared to death when I caught a small eel which I mistook for a snake. Unfortunately, the river is now too shallow.
And yes, there was this “public dance” which I look forward too every summer when I went home to my hometown. Everybody in our barrio was a relative. All the girls were somehow connected by blood or affinity with my grandmother.
But the “public dance” in the barrio hall opened one great opportunity once in awhile, specially during the summer months of April and May. At one time, there was this stranger of a lady who was swarmed by the boys at the dancing hall. There was no way to dance with her without elbowing somebody else. I went to the emcee, and told him I would like to have a special dance. The emcee asked me how much I would pay, which I replied, “Don’t worry, I will pay the cashier”. Of course, being a student, I had only twenty five cent when the running rate was five pesos.
That emcee would retell the stories even when I became a lawyer.
At the age of twelve, I got drunk with tuba. My maternal grandmother would drink tuba everyday. One day, I drunk several glasses of her tuba. That was my first intoxication. In high school, our betting during basketball games was one peso per player. That would make five pesos if we won. At that time, hard spirit, Ginebra, would cost only four fifty pesos.
I never kicked the habit of drinking, until today. Yet during those drinking sessions in my undergraduate and in law school, I had intellectual exchange of ideas with my friends who are mostly achievers. Many student activities were planned during those drinking sessions. I kept my sanity during the tortious six months bar exam review by drinking every Friday and Saturday nights.
We did not have money during our college days to support our drinking. But we were resourceful. We invite rich kids in our group to pay for the drinks in exchange for helping them in their assignments. Many times, my two other buddies, who were student leaders, would organize essay writing, literary writing, and extemporaneous speech contests. The three of us would join the contests. We were assured of the prize money for our drinks.
These experiences and more become part of who you are. It is not only the accumulation of knowledge learned from books that matter. One can handle best the rigors of law school, and even of law practice, due to the things unrelated to law. Or life becomes a morbid boredom.