Bata Bata, Paano ka Ginawa?* (part I)
| *pasintabi kay Bb. Lualhati Bautista IPIS I am not afraid of ghosts (maybe because I really haven't encountered one, face to face) but I believe they exist. I am not afraid of *insert dad's Queen cassette tape here* thunderbolts and lightning – very, very frightening, not me. I am not afraid of death. But I am afraid of cockroaches. They scare me, especially when they fly, in so many ways than one. I get goosebumps when I see one flying around. My friend Ngort said they don't have eyes, which make them even scarier. They don't see where they're going, or landing. No wonder why I see some of them forcefully slap their yucky bodies on walls and curtains. |
I started fearing them when I was about five or six. One sunny afternoon while biking in the block, I saw one of my playmates sitting happily on top of their red boxy Lancer. She waved at me happily. I stopped and chatted with her for a while when I noticed this huge red bump in the middle of her forehead. It was so big I thought she exchanged her face for a humungous pantal!
"Anong nangyari sa noo mo?!" I quipped. "Nakagat ng Ipis!" she said.
PUTCHA!
Para shang pantal na tinubuan ng mukha!
Then there, I feared the dreadful ipis! I thought they were powerful. So powerful that they turned the face of my playmate into an enormously red bump that would pass as a saucer where mom puts her patis when eating sinigang!
I wished I never asked why she had that red bump on her forehead so I would have never acquired this alarming fright of the dreadful (and powerful) ipis! What kind of kid would not have a phobia of something so small but so monstrous it could change your looks instantly from a pretty face to a pretty saucer with hair?!
PENDONG!
Nuts (my ex-boyfriend) and I have always thought of saving up for a Volkswagen beetle car when we were still together. But now that we're not together any longer, I'm not sure if he would still want to get one,but I still would. Old school beetles are less expensive than other car models for some reasons: one, they are small and most of them did not have built in air-conditioning units; two, they have long been out of "fashion"; three, only a few people find them good-looking, some kids today even find it odd-looking; and four, they are hunchbacked! Who would want a hunchbacked car? I would. I still will.
We cannot deny it, no matter how beautiful a beetle may be, it is, and will forever be kuba! KOTSENG KUBA! If it were in a fantaserye, it could turn into something gorgeous like Ann Curtis, after swinging up and down a bell's rope cable in a bell tower somewhere in ABS-CBN.
When I was a kid, I never understood the essence of that phrase (or statement) and the actions that came with it. I never found anything funny about being kuba, or kalbo (Pendong! May Kalbo!). I was born in 1982 and the only kuba that I knew was Nana Baste, my Yaya Nora's 80-year old mother. Not until my family moved to Caloocan (from Bulacan) in 1991. Most of my cousins live here so I had a lot of playmates, mostly their kids (I was second to the youngest of around 30 Sanchez Cousins). So I played bahay-bahayan and teacher-teacheran with my nieces and nephews, most of them a few years older than me. My cousin Ate Do had a maroon-ish beetle. Here's where the story begins.
Ate Do and her husband always took the Kuba (sorry but that's how I really call a beetle) to work. Their Unica Hija Ching, my niece who's 20 months older than me, would go to my house almost everyday, or vice versa. We would play most of the day, depended upon the time of our classes and we had morning classes most of our elementary school lives. On times that I was the one who went to Ching's place, where some 6 more nieces and nephews lived because it was kind of a compound, I always heard that "pendong" phrase whenever Ate Do's Kuba came to the driveway. All my nephews and nieces would pass pendongs around like a basketball team playing their last 24-second shot clock – it happened fast, and one person got more than one pendong at once. Can you imagine? They all moved fast, making sure the pass (of the pendong) would be received and nobody avoided the pass – it was really like a basketball team, save for the annoying grins on their faces, and the chaos. It happened every single workday, except when the Kuba stayed for the day.
I cannot deny it but I also got a lot "pendongs" in my childhood.
I am not sure if the kids today still do that pendong thing. Maybe they do but the original Kuba is so scarce kids do not really have the kismet to get their own dose of pendong. I don't think they give away pendongs when they see the new toy-car looking hunchback from Toyota.
I also dreamt of having one of those for my own – what was that Toyota model? Was that Toyota? I forgot. Anyway, I've always liked the old Foksvagin (Volkswagen) Beetle. I think I'll have mine in shiny purple, pink, or yellow. Sleek stainless bumpers and side mirrors, high-freon ACU and tinted windows, and maybe a flower somewhere to complete the hippie look. Pretty huh? But then again, no matter how pretty my auto will be, Kuba is still, and forever will be Kuba.
24 May 2005 | 2:04 AM
Ate Do and her husband always took the Kuba (sorry but that's how I really call a beetle) to work. Their Unica Hija Ching, my niece who's 20 months older than me, would go to my house almost everyday, or vice versa. We would play most of the day, depended upon the time of our classes and we had morning classes most of our elementary school lives. On times that I was the one who went to Ching's place, where some 6 more nieces and nephews lived because it was kind of a compound, I always heard that "pendong" phrase whenever Ate Do's Kuba came to the driveway. All my nephews and nieces would pass pendongs around like a basketball team playing their last 24-second shot clock – it happened fast, and one person got more than one pendong at once. Can you imagine? They all moved fast, making sure the pass (of the pendong) would be received and nobody avoided the pass – it was really like a basketball team, save for the annoying grins on their faces, and the chaos. It happened every single workday, except when the Kuba stayed for the day.
I cannot deny it but I also got a lot "pendongs" in my childhood.
I am not sure if the kids today still do that pendong thing. Maybe they do but the original Kuba is so scarce kids do not really have the kismet to get their own dose of pendong. I don't think they give away pendongs when they see the new toy-car looking hunchback from Toyota.
I also dreamt of having one of those for my own – what was that Toyota model? Was that Toyota? I forgot. Anyway, I've always liked the old Foksvagin (Volkswagen) Beetle. I think I'll have mine in shiny purple, pink, or yellow. Sleek stainless bumpers and side mirrors, high-freon ACU and tinted windows, and maybe a flower somewhere to complete the hippie look. Pretty huh? But then again, no matter how pretty my auto will be, Kuba is still, and forever will be Kuba.
24 May 2005 | 2:04 AM
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