The month of May and its onslaught of late afternoon rains always take me back to the days when they gave me a skewed sense of dread. This was when I was in public school as a child growing up in the 80s and my mother would start talking about the coming school year to us three kids.
"O, pasukan nyo na sa June 5. Kailangan magsanay na kayong matulog nang maaga," she would remind us dutifully when it hit her that April had passed.
Year after year, though, variations of that speech fell on deaf ears. No, we never wanted to go to bed early; no, we didn't feel tired at 8 p.m. We'd be up till dawn talking about toys and games, trips to Pasig, cartoons, episodes of Jennifer Slept Here, Automan, The Greatest American Hero, or any of them sitcoms we couldn't stay up for to watch religiously because they were on past our "bedtime".
Anyway, I'll be first to admit I never got excited about going to school because I didn't like schedules (still don't) and was deathly afraid of the teachers or any other grown-up in authority for that matter. Oddly enough, my elementary school years from 1984 to 1990 were probably the happiest days of my life because outside the classroom, being in public school allowed me to experience unfiltered diversity.
Unscrupulous encyclopedia salesmen, loonies on the lose climbing up the concrete water tank or eating flowers in the garden, interminable batches of visitors from out of town using your classroom as their dorm--every social (and psychological) background made their presence known in Pilot. And that's just the teaching staff. =D
The streetgames were pure joy, too. As soon as class was done (and cleaners' duty), we'd be out on the green sweating from dodgeball or langit-lupa, acting out crazy plays on this bridge over a small pond with a giant kabibe on the center, or getting lost in the sprawling property that is Imus Pilot Elementary School. That last one would chiefly be me since I was always wandering off into neverland in search of hidden passages. No kidding. It's funny to realize now that I-P-E-S really had the ideal landscaping for children raised on television. The whole place was like a Hollywood backlot.
Speaking of which, morning recess was always a challenge as hundreds of kids would squeeze into Canteen 1, all wanting the same thing at the same time. So everyday at 9 a.m., a scene from The Ten Commandments would be re-enacted in that hall. That or the Feeding of the Multitude.
When the children of the corn have filled their pits, the place would mellow back into a lounge where the parents would gossip about so-and-so's kid. This notwithstanding, I always wished my mother would be there, too. But I'm glad she wasn't or I'd never have been able to outgrow my crying. Yes, I also cried each time my mother would drop me off in the classroom. Of course, I would eventually stop the habit...right around the -ber months I should say.
(To be continued)
