Play School
My life is great. I love my life. My job’s great. My son’s wonderful. My family’s fine. My friends are amazing. All’s good.
But I can’t help but miss highschool.
I went to a humble little school in San Mateo, Rizal called St. Matthew’s Academy. Many of my life-changing experiences happened in this quaint little school and many of my best friends I met while attending this place we fondly call “Macho”.
The best thing about Macho are the non-academic activities that you can do (which my mother hated because it got in the way of better grades) which I now realize are the real sources of knowledge.
I learned that bad grammar and bad spelling make for bad reading while I wrote for our school paper, The Matthenian Gazette. I hope never to read any copy of our Gazettes ever again as I will be reminded of the Candy-mag-like writing which I thought was intelligent at that time. (Like ending every article with “Ciao!” or “Till next ish!”. Dear God….)
Oh no. Creepy flashback. During senior year, when I had a semi-regular column, I used to write a lot about love. Falling in love, keeping relationships, that sort of freakiness. I had my first boyfriend in senior year which explains it.
(Come to think of it, I still do that.)
I learned that a good PR scheme, smiling a lot, greeting total strangers, and dancing on stage will get you elected in the student council, the Council of Matthenians. (Yes. I danced on stage which was not a proud moment). Two groups of students will form parties, draft a party agenda (which is usually just about solidarity crap), file for candidacy and then visit each classroom to woo the students to vote for us. The youngest in the electorate are the 10-year-olds in Grade 4. There is an election myth that if you woo these Grade 4 students — befriend them, high-five them on the halls, give them buttons — and you get a solid Grade 4 block vote, your whole party will win by a landslide. See? Political machinations at such an early age! No wonder we’re all screwed.
(For the curious, I was elected Public Relations Officer of the student council. My main purpose was just, well…. host events.)
I learned that not all intelligent people are talented and not all talented people are intelligent (and being talented doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not intelligent too) while I served as President — yes, don’t roll your eyes — of Teatro Filipino. (Collective gasp). It doesn’t say much about me as president of the theater club since we weren’t able to mount any major play. I was more of a dance-lover so we danced a lot.
Finally, I learned that both guys and girls are sexier in battle threads as a CAT officer of the St. Matthew’s Academy Corps of Cadets. Twirling guns and swords, walking and shouting under the sun, squatting for fifteen minutes (Because your belt isn’t shiny. What kind of lame ass reason is that) and then eating really bad egg sandwich downed with Richee orange juice were a welcome Saturday treat for us. And nobody got that. Nobody. We enjoyed the torture. We looked forward to smelling really bad under the ultraviolet rays of the sun by week’s end. It was probably the closest thing to a fraternity that I would ever experience.
Still on CAT, we used to have a yearly occasion called Hell Month (I think it’s usually November). During Hell Month, officers would subject rookie cadets to different sorts of mental tortures, usually just to humiliate them or make them feel stupid. As a rookie cadet in junior year, I shined shoes, did assignments, ran four flights of stairs, and sang — exclusively, in a locked room, alone, with a creepy, unattractive officer —- just to get through Hell Month. When I finally became an officer during senior year, I made my punishments as creative as possible. I asked one rookie cadet to dance instead of salute every time he sees me down the halls.
I guess the best part of it all was that it was all play —- play job, play elections, play fraternities. No one really gets hurt. No one loses large sums of money. No one dies.
I still go through deadlines and politics and hazing in real life. But it’s not fun anymore.
