For the patient who read “back”: I apologise if your eyes had hurt.
For Wifezilla who came home for love and home and me.
For Nonoy and his Good Fridays and unemployment: Teach!
For the old man’s buzzed head and who’s really pissed off at me now because I’m too “nice”.
For Joachim who would find me by following my laugh and who has a buzzed head now, too.
Two buzzed heads make me want to shave my head now, too.
And for all those who had surfaced because I have gone fishing, the bet now is all-or-nothing.
Let’s play that holy-fucking-shit-game: I’m turning 13 soon.
I woke up thinking of that day, my last day in teaching that summer in 2006. One of my students had asked me to smoke with them, as if I would follow docilely. I had shrugged instead of shaking my head and excused the punk doesn’t really know who he’s talking to. I needed to smoke anyway.
I listened to him talk to his girlfriend and friends.
He was talking about family--- complaints that if you really think about them shouldn’t be complaints. (My dad is like this...My mom is like that...The way the children I was teaching would think parents should be as if they knew or even tried to understand how being a parent is.)
As I smoked and listened, I thought again of a girl who thought of more than herself, had sacrificed her family and the life that girls her age would live, because she loved her country so much, thought that her way, in that way, she could help right the wrong in life in this country.
She was killed by soldiers just before her 21st birthday.
Just days before as I sat there and smoked, listening to my students talk, that summer.
When I found out about that girl several mornings before, I listened to my friend cry. That morning, my friend was on the MRT and on her way to work. I had called her as soon as I woke up because it was her birthday.
I had asked, “Why are you crying?”
She had sobbed, “My sister’s dead.”
When I said goodbye to her, I started crying, too.
Egg had just woken, saw me and asked, “Why are you crying?”
I told her what I just found out but I couldn’t answer the why with words, only with tears.
Then I called Dad, “Was there an encounter recently?”
I heard him pause then he asked, “How do you know about that?”
I only answered, “There’s this girl...I don’t know what name she’s called but her real name is...Can you please find out what happened? Where she is? The body...And if she looks okay...Is it possible for her mother not to see her like...”
Dad had quietly asked, “Is she your friend?”
I said, “She’s Selena’s sister.”
Dad knew Selena. My tears started falling again and I said goodbye to Dad before he heard my tears.
Dad called me minutes later and gave me the information.
He had asked me if I wanted him to go there, to assist.
I said no.
After all, it would put him in a precarious position. It was bad enough that it was known that we had some high-ranking some relatives in the New People’s Army since Martial Law (and one of them was only granted amnesty in the 1990s) and Dad was working for the Philippine Army. It would be dangerous for him to be seen there, to be identified by those in the NPA who would also try to kill him as he would go around Bicol to give what help he (and the institution he represented) could to the soldiers.
We are not talking about guns as help but money that would help the families of soldiers for food, for a little nipa hut for a house, for their children’s education, or for funerals that would bury their dead loved ones who died while serving their country.
Dad would get memos and reprimands about how he ran things. His bosses would tell him, “What are we?! A charity institution?!” Dad would just sometimes send the memos back with grammatical corrections or with memos that are perfect models for business communication warfare and would continue to help in what way he could, still approving loans that shouldn’t be approved.
If you think the stunts I pull are crazy, wait until you hear what my dad or my baby sister had done.
I had once asked Dad, “What if I go underground?”
He had laughed, “Patatayuan kita ng rebulto sa harap ng bahay natin.”
And Ma had said, “Diyos ko Mia! Ikamamatay ko yan Mia! Mia...walang facial sa bundok!”
I had asked Mario-the-Marxist the same question.
Mario said, “You really think that’s the answer? Sis, you and I know that change is done inside the classroom. Bring the revolution inside! Education is the answer! I’ll smash you! Yabadoowap!”
And Selena had once told me, “No, Mia. No. Why are you even thinking about this?”
I had said, “And lakas ng tawag sa ‘kin eh.”
We were in Italianni’s in Eastwood that night: it was 2005. If you have money because you are paid well, you can buy your nth glass of wine that costs 350 a glass to forget the unhappiness that you feel over things like your job.
My job at that time was what I fondly call a brain whore: I made language programs for whatever course that would make money; I trained faculty and personnel in (corporate) communications; I wrote manuals; I studied the market for the competition when it came to offering language courses; and I butted heads with anyone who would dare to sacrifice academic excellence or education of the students over budget cuts.
Education as a business is one of the dirtiest institutions around.
Teaching was definitely a step-down for someone in my position in that institution. My previous boss didn’t and wouldn’t even allow it. But one of the many reasons why I agreed to teach in that institution was for students not to learn leave your life, go to the mountains, pick up a gun, learn to kill, be killed.
I wanted to make the students ask questions, ask themselves why life is like this and that, how they can change it, what can they do to serve not just their self-interests but their country because they have opportunities besides picking up a gun, learning to kill, and being killed.
Most of our soldiers become soldiers because they have no other opportunities in life.
Most of the rebels become rebels because they think that there’s no other recourse to change things.
You know why I was crying and I sometimes still cry for Selena’s sister?
I had cried because at that moment that I heard she died, I wanted to go to the countryside and pick up a gun just so that what she had died for wouldn’t all come to waste.
I was being called that way and I was fighting that call, knowing that it was not the way.
I continue to cry because in the end she would be forgotten, her life would be forgotten, her death would be forgotten--- the way other lives and other deaths like hers were forgotten. Stories like hers are written in the newspapers everyday. They were written in texts. They were shown in movies. Still, most have forgotten about them--- the way people have forgotten where they buried the bodies of people who had disappeared during Martial Law.
People forget so easily.
Most young people don’t even know these things anymore (like the way they went “Huh? Who?” when people went gaga over Gabby Concepcion’s comeback).
We still write of them so that they would be remembered, so that we would remember the lessons of their lives. The way Francisco Arcellana had written this essay entitled “Dear MA” about how he was so angry that Manuel Arguilla died for his revolution.
Francisco Arcellana had said that of course the country needed revolutionaries, but we needed people who could write and through their writing would change and right the wrongs in life. He wrote short of saying Damn you Manuel Arguilla for taking that gun instead of your pen. Damn you for dying.
Last year, I finally wrote a story for her sister, for her.
I wrote that, not for me, but so her story, their story would be attested. But in the writing business, editors pick which stories are to be read or when they would be published. It’s up to the editor who accepted that story when it would be published.
And I never even wrote about her in 2006 in my blog, feeling like I had no right to write about her. After all, I wasn’t her sister or her mother or her father or her friend.
And how could I write when I had no words, only tears.
That summer in 2006, I left that job and teaching to return home to Naga, to talk to Dad about her death and where my life was going.
While in Naga, Selena sent me a message saying that there was an article about her sister in Inquirer. I was reading the article aloud to my family until I couldn’t read anymore and choked. I had excused myself to go to our garage and cried there, muffling my sobs with the hem of my shirt.
I had almost cried again when Dad said to me while we were drinking, “You know what the soldiers said? They said, ‘Sir, ang babata pa. Ang babata...’”
And he said that the soldiers were shaking their heads. One had said to Dad, “Sir, di ko talaga maintindihan na minsan kung bakit andun yan mga batang yan...”
Too goddamn young to be even there and to die: let’s all drink to motherfucking that.
I was listening to him and my students talk that day, that summer in 2006.
I shook my head, stood up, excused myself and walked towards our building.
His ex-girlfriend then came up to me, wanting to talk to me.
I nodded and listened to her.
She was complaining about her love life.
I finally snapped and said what I didn’t choose to tell my other student who was complaining about his family, “You know, a girl about your age died a couple of days ago. Killed by soldiers. She was fighting for her country. Her country. Our country. Something bigger than she was. She began doing at that when she was 14. And here you are complaining about your love life?! Ay! Better start really thinking about things.”
I was relieved that I was leaving because teaching had become one of those things in my life at that time that didn’t make sense too. And at that time, I was grieving for the death of Professor Emeritus Pacita G. Fernandez and my graduate studies in Comparative Literature was rendered absurd. Her death made me lose interest and I felt like I would not be able to get the support I needed for my research.
After all, she laughed and said “I like how your mind works” when I told her that I wanted to prove that we could have a Philippine Literature in English without Western influence on our aesthetic standards. Mindfuck. In our class, everybody was saying “That’s impossible.”
And you know one of the things Ma’am said to us?
“My doctor said I have a big heart. This is why I’m teaching literature. In literature, when you have a big heart, that’s a good thing. In medicine, when you have a big heart, that’s a bad thing.”
She died because she was old and had a big heart.
At the end of that summer, I had successfully fought this calling, this call that whispered “If you want to teach, why don’t you teach then in the countryside, in the mountains?”
I had resolved to return to the school where I taught.
Why there?
Like one (consistent) reader had complained
which I would now name “Troll”
and on some days I laughingly call:
“That Fucking Idiot. What school produced THAT perception?
Punyeta overhaul nila GE Program and teaching approaches nila.”
Just like UP overhauled everything because we produced Big Bayaw Marcos.
The Troll by the way has a death-tag on its head,
according to Wifezilla and Joachim.
Their death-tags on the Troll, not mine.
And children, let’s all remember
why Zeus levelled that town
leaving only this old couple
that became one tree.
I dare anyone to say to me in person:
“I’m Tazzy The Troll.”
If you even say that as a joke
then the joke’s on you
because I will slap you.
That will be fun.
(I’m running zero on miraculous virtues.)
The Troll really crapped on so many things
including on what I’m writing about now.
And the “troll” nation is offended.
Blame it on the Troll.
Not for lack of offers, if I may say so. Even Katitang had offered in behalf of Ateneo but then again she laughed, “Puta! We can’t afford your pay!” Really my being is not that expensive but I refuse to be paid less than I think I deserve.
But get people like me interested enough and we do it all for free, which really pisses off my loved ones.
And really, the majority of this country’s student body and workforce do not come from schools like branches of UP, Ateneo, La Salle, UST or (sige na nga baka mainsulto pa si Joel Toledo) Miriam.
[But I was aghast that the students I encountered from there during the anniversary of Happy Mondays didn’t know what the letters in CNF stood for. I had quipped, “Buti na lang di niyo ko teacher. Kung hindi yari kayo.”]
I always say, “May teachers na silang okay eh. Magsilbi naman tayo dun sa kailangan pagsilbihan.” And really, a lot of smart people don’t get that because a lot of smart people think that if you were smart, you should teach in the schools mentioned above.
One of the many reasons why I returned to teaching in that institution was that I had many students who were not yet done in their journey to better communication skills in English.
[And they had some bad (English) teachers already. One teacher had asked them to write a short story with a minimum of 30 yellow pages. Even I had tumbled in a zigzag when I heard THAT. But then again, I suppose I wasn’t any “better” because I made them do some things like a comparative content analysis of “Illium” and the movie “
And I simply didn’t want anyone messing with their progress in using English but thinking as Filipinos and other things like critical thinking.
Also, I was not done testing my language program: my program guinea pig still had Expository Writing, Speech Communication and Literature to take. I tracked down where my guinea pig (and his friends) went to high school and found out that it’s actually owned by a friend. I told that friend that the English of their graduates suck (in very specific areas) so they better do something about it. That’s Research& Development for you in Education.
And according to one of my stories in class the first time I lost my temper while teaching form January to March in 2006:
I attended a public school. I met someone there. Someone who loves to read. But then he came from a very poor family and he thought that he had no future. No future besides running and selling drugs and all the bad jobs in life. He needed money after all. When I was in college, I would still visit him now and then and give him books. He was killed a couple of years ago, stabbed I heard for a drug deal gone sour. When we would talk, that’s one of the things he would always say: he wished someone, a teacher perhaps, had given him hope and made him believe that he could be better. But then again it was too late for him. And you people don’t even have big money problems. You can even go to college so that means that you have money for food. Think about it. Class dismissed. You bet your ass they started coming to class on time and prepared.
And one of my little eccentricities: that student who was complaining about his family had appealed to me that his girlfriend wouldn’t learn what he learned from me because I wouldn’t be there. He was the one who had sent me messages on and on about coming back to teach.
I had laughed then: ah, the things boyfriends do because they love their girlfriends.
Shucks, so sweet... or maybe he was just bored.
But some students, really, just don’t want to learn.
Their teachers still hope that they learn in life.
And some teachers don’t really give a fuck.
By December 2006, I had resigned from teaching again.
Teaching and being a brain whore in that institution was destroying me.
After all, it was forcing me to be “nice” when I was dying to kick silly pricks or slap silly bitches. I had envied Katitang when she got into an altercation with a student from Ateneo because that little prick took a picture of her underwear when she was blissfully drinking from a fountain.
You know what she did? She looked for that boy and screamed at him with something like “Hoy! Putang ina mo! Yadayaayadayada! Maliit nga titi mo tang ina among intsik!”
[And Katitang was the one who taught me to say, “Sinayang mo lang tamod ng tatay mo!”
And by the way the female English teacher character in Joey’s “Logovore” is loosely based on Katitang.]
Being “nice” was not worth it: it was forcing to conform to their standards.
Excuse me, let’s all distinguish the difference between “compromise” and “conformity”.
Like there was this one time, I was just told that I would do a reading for a Mass minutes before it started. I said, “You should have asked not told me. I’m an atheist. I don’t do readings.”
The personnel blinked and blurted out, “Ah, oo, kasi taga-UP ka pala.”
I laughed, “What does UP have to do with my being an atheist? So what you’re saying is that when someone’s from UP, someone’s automatically an atheist?”
Then there was this other time that it was the holiday for the Ramadan. They said all personnel should come to work that Friday and not come to work on Monday.
I said, “My former husband was a Muslim. I observe that tradition. And you’re telling me I can’t observe that tradition? What if I tell you now that I’m a Mulsim? This is ground for discrimination or a Jihad, you know.”
Such was the contamination of that conformity that I found myself vomiting every time I thought about it (and some other things) from January until July of 2007.
Forsaking the freedom to be myself did that.
Feeling betrayed does that, too.
And I chose people instead of that job.
After all, I was losing people I love because of the job.
It was not worth it.
I lost people anyway.
So I said, “Fuck it.”
Now, give me a list of the crappiest higher education institutions we have in this big, bad city.
I’ll compare my list with yours.
Let’s all see where I would teach next: it’s now a matter of considering being paid 70-125-300 pesos per hour and juggling other jobs so that I would be able to continue teaching. There are bets on that, too.
[And maybe I’ll end up looking like Michelle Pfeiffer there OR in the boondocks.]
I woke up today with the sentence “I am not nice” in my head.
I started feeling lighter.
And I laughed.
Joey laughed.
The old man laughed.
And Aoux would say, “I told you so!”
All right, let’s all fucking play because I’m back in the playground.
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