Homecoming
Our grade school's first ever alumni homecoming brought together hundreds of people only few of whom I was able to recognize at first glance, for understandably so, the alumnus' or alumna's face is that of one changed and wrinkled by numerous candle-blowing exercises done over the years. Homecomers, I assume, don't wear baby-faces.
Some, though, wore the retreating grin of old, ironically happy to meet up with others who in turn carried genuinely secured smiles reflective of their mood for the day. Reliving old memories evoked laughter, offensive or otherwise, that recaptured the fun of childhood and the carefree-ness of the old days -- or catching the uncaring glance of others. It was homecoming day anyways, and it was time to look back, to make "balik-tanaw", as the theme of the day dictates.
Our group, though, found it difficult what to baliktanaw in particular. Someone suggested that someone should narrate our class experience of one horrible afternoon when we were taught a painful lesson or two about pornography, este... about photography, er... (can't really seize on the appropriate term to capsulize the experience), well... por diyos por santo.
Having refused to go on stage to do a "Lola Basyang", I instead opted to pound on these laptop keys when I reached home and aimed to blog the story in homecoming ROM (only) about that post-meridius horribilis, circa 19-kopong kopong.
Whodunit?
The question remains unanswered decades after the fact. Babylin's long-term memory chinks showed when naming names that do not fit the puzzle. Melinda's soft verbal punches must have landed hard to any mamon-hearted suspect whom God grants innocence all these years, all these decades.
Yet the mystery hangs like a tough nut offered to those who are prepared to waste away precious brain cells (or what's left of them) just to have it cracked, trivial an effort as it may seem for trivial a case, but still is something an issue that deserves a closure, nonetheless. Why should this blogger wers-wers words anyways, when narrating this forgettable mystery sorely lacks the thrills and tears that went with it when it was happening.
Anyway, the mystery was born from a chaos of dramatics one afternoon in a sixth-grade classroom in our village-based Buting Elementary school. The actors: forty or so children, boys and girls, ages ranging from 11 to 13; and a twenty-something female school teacher: single, conservative, single and conservative.
The plot?
Some, though, wore the retreating grin of old, ironically happy to meet up with others who in turn carried genuinely secured smiles reflective of their mood for the day. Reliving old memories evoked laughter, offensive or otherwise, that recaptured the fun of childhood and the carefree-ness of the old days -- or catching the uncaring glance of others. It was homecoming day anyways, and it was time to look back, to make "balik-tanaw", as the theme of the day dictates.
Our group, though, found it difficult what to baliktanaw in particular. Someone suggested that someone should narrate our class experience of one horrible afternoon when we were taught a painful lesson or two about pornography, este... about photography, er... (can't really seize on the appropriate term to capsulize the experience), well... por diyos por santo.
Having refused to go on stage to do a "Lola Basyang", I instead opted to pound on these laptop keys when I reached home and aimed to blog the story in homecoming ROM (only) about that post-meridius horribilis, circa 19-kopong kopong.
Whodunit?
The question remains unanswered decades after the fact. Babylin's long-term memory chinks showed when naming names that do not fit the puzzle. Melinda's soft verbal punches must have landed hard to any mamon-hearted suspect whom God grants innocence all these years, all these decades.
Yet the mystery hangs like a tough nut offered to those who are prepared to waste away precious brain cells (or what's left of them) just to have it cracked, trivial an effort as it may seem for trivial a case, but still is something an issue that deserves a closure, nonetheless. Why should this blogger wers-wers words anyways, when narrating this forgettable mystery sorely lacks the thrills and tears that went with it when it was happening.
Anyway, the mystery was born from a chaos of dramatics one afternoon in a sixth-grade classroom in our village-based Buting Elementary school. The actors: forty or so children, boys and girls, ages ranging from 11 to 13; and a twenty-something female school teacher: single, conservative, single and conservative.
The plot?
Listen:
Ah... yes, we were children who were always told to listen -- by our elders, by our teachers. Children don't speak unless told -- no, commanded -- to speak, by our elders, by our teachers who'd call our names for recitation whether one raises his/her hand or not. You speak without being prompted to, then you're tagged "noisy" and listed in "noisy pupils" log, penciled by no less than a low-key, quiet, muted, este... demure classmate. Hmmm... "sipsip" was then a popular jargon.
Row 2, composed of around 12 boys and girls, assigned cleaners for the day, were asked -- no, commanded -- to squat in front of the class as soon as all the 40 or so of us came back filling up the classroom after having filled up our tummies during the lunchbreak spent in our respective homes. In those days, there was not much shortage of classrooms, unlike now, when gradeschoolers would experience one way or another, holding classes under the shade of trees (if there are still trees left in a barangay or inside a school compound), and eating lunch outside of canteens, if there indeed are canteens constructed to serve children's gastronomic needs.
So, in that afternoon, children of Row 2, the day's Squat Squad, ALL 12 of them, were being punished in the absence of the teacher's foolproof assessment of who, in Limahong's name, placed an obscene picture on her desk! Without a principal suspect, and without having no one confessing to the "crime", er... mischief (how else define a misdemeanor committed by any 11- or 12-year old?), the "victim" teacher, also the commanding general in that classroom, jury, judge, referee, god -- all rolled into one -- found it in her "wisdom" to punish around 12 boys and girls, and made to squat for over an hour, even as the whining and wailing and crying pervaded the classroom during their physical ordeal. "Tormented" is an understatement. For children, well... it was torture.
In that neurotic afternoon, screaming and sobbing dramatics was the order of the day. The drama was played as if it came straight from DZ-ek-ek radio. Accusations and counter-accusations rained across the room. Dingdong took the penalty in almost a quiet fashion. Bogie was stopped on his tracks rushing to a spot where what looked like a boy scout's hunting knife laid quietly. George was belligerent, and so were his rowmates, insisting innocence.
Ah... yes, we were children who were always told to listen -- by our elders, by our teachers. Children don't speak unless told -- no, commanded -- to speak, by our elders, by our teachers who'd call our names for recitation whether one raises his/her hand or not. You speak without being prompted to, then you're tagged "noisy" and listed in "noisy pupils" log, penciled by no less than a low-key, quiet, muted, este... demure classmate. Hmmm... "sipsip" was then a popular jargon.
Row 2, composed of around 12 boys and girls, assigned cleaners for the day, were asked -- no, commanded -- to squat in front of the class as soon as all the 40 or so of us came back filling up the classroom after having filled up our tummies during the lunchbreak spent in our respective homes. In those days, there was not much shortage of classrooms, unlike now, when gradeschoolers would experience one way or another, holding classes under the shade of trees (if there are still trees left in a barangay or inside a school compound), and eating lunch outside of canteens, if there indeed are canteens constructed to serve children's gastronomic needs.
So, in that afternoon, children of Row 2, the day's Squat Squad, ALL 12 of them, were being punished in the absence of the teacher's foolproof assessment of who, in Limahong's name, placed an obscene picture on her desk! Without a principal suspect, and without having no one confessing to the "crime", er... mischief (how else define a misdemeanor committed by any 11- or 12-year old?), the "victim" teacher, also the commanding general in that classroom, jury, judge, referee, god -- all rolled into one -- found it in her "wisdom" to punish around 12 boys and girls, and made to squat for over an hour, even as the whining and wailing and crying pervaded the classroom during their physical ordeal. "Tormented" is an understatement. For children, well... it was torture.
In that neurotic afternoon, screaming and sobbing dramatics was the order of the day. The drama was played as if it came straight from DZ-ek-ek radio. Accusations and counter-accusations rained across the room. Dingdong took the penalty in almost a quiet fashion. Bogie was stopped on his tracks rushing to a spot where what looked like a boy scout's hunting knife laid quietly. George was belligerent, and so were his rowmates, insisting innocence.
And as a spectator from Row 4, I didn't know what to make of what I was feeling that afternoon. My young mind and relatively battered emotion couldn't somehow grasp at what I wanted to feel -- maybe rage? maybe pity? Ahh... perhaps I was whom one may call "bobo sa row four".
Well, looking back, am now trying to figure out what the drama director, the "victim" teacher, was feeling then. Was she really furious? Did she genuinely feel offended by what she may have thought as a brazen disregard for her "dalagang-pilipina" femininity, and/or her undisputed status as the "classroom commander"? Did she find enough satisfaction seeing 12 kids sweating and crying, and the whole class divided and splintered to the last individual swearing at the others to "please, please, confess... whoever placed the bomba!"
Bomba indeed it was, as bombastic as the slang that goes for what today we call XXX. I, and perhaps most of my classmates didn't actually see the bomba picture, so I wouldn't know how obscene or how lewd it was. I don't even want to speculate if it was a naked (or fully dressed?) woman, or man, or chimp, or even an insect, that was there in that pic.
But what we were so sure of, is this: If indeed the culprit was one in that Row 2 squat squad, then it follows that the 11 others didn't deserve the brutal punishment, and the rest of the class neither deserved the drama mounted by the main cast nor the trauma of being confused spectators in a theater of the absurd, where a superimposed silhouette of a bomba was the stage backdrop. Further, if indeed it was one of those 11- or 12-year-olds who did it, and was pinpointed definitively, question is: would have he/she deserved such kind of punishment?
What or who was in the pic? Nude? Semi-nude? I guess it doesn't matter anymore. What sure matters specially today, when the question of (imposing) discipline is juxtaposed between two different time-contexts : The old days, when, for neither rhyme nor reason, children were physically and psychologically tormented; and today, when existing laws and lessons are placed that presuppose children are kept safe from any harrowing experience of abuse... for children NOT to experience abuse.
Baliktanaw-ing a horrible afternoon is, well, painfully nostalgic. It sure is an experience that can serve reunion or homecoming "parlor games", some memory to laugh at, or something that'll bring goose bumps, or nerve-wracking sensation to any member of Class 19-kopong-kopong, depending on who's narrating or listening to the story.
But, really... whodunit? Who really did?
The pointing finger may until today have yet to find its mark, even as speculation reached the point in one homecoming moment when a couple of my classmates inferred or hoped that the perpetrator of the "crime", er, mischief, had already confessed, albeit privately, to the offended teacher, and that the latter had granted forgiveness. Or, that the real culprit was a class-outsider, and may have even been an adult, who was able to sneak into our classroom that crazy afternoon. After all, elementary schools are not peopled exclusively by children... nobody knows(?).
Ahh... reminiscing the (not-so-) good old days does not always bring joyous sensation, specially if punctuated by numerous speculations, what-if's and what-might-have-been's about a once-upon-a-time when the following three words were yet to form a fighting slogan:
"Stop Child Abuse!"
posted by totoy.c.c.perpeña | 7:49 AM
