Past Blessed the Child

It was great to be a child in those days.

On lazy afternoons, my brother Mente, my sister Nene and I made horses out of Mother’s pillows and played the Zimatar or Diego Bandido episodes which we heard over DZGE, the local radio station.

We played in the rooms upstairs, riding our pillow horses, facing our enemies and pursuing our adventures, until our Manoy Ano scolded and told us to bring the beddings—blankets, sheets and all—back to order or else Mother would call it a day when she returned. But we would play to our hearts’ content; after all, we thought Mother would be pleased because we were only playing inside the house. That way she would not really be bothered.

Some other days, in my grandparents house which we call Libod (literally, backyard), my cousins and I would play taraguan (hide and seek) and be thrilled by not easily finding all the playmates. After a while, one would give up not “seeking” the last one hidden; and find out he already left because his mother asked him to run an errand. And so we’d stop and think of other games which would thrill us.

We would then gather and tell stories we would just invent. Once, I wove a story about the pictures from a book I read until my cousins pestered me to finish it perhaps because it did not make sense perhaps because I only jumbled them.

At the time, we made our toys out of materials just available to us. We made our own toys and games and we enjoyed them. Perhaps they were cruder but we and our imaginations, not our toys, not other things, were responsible for our own enjoyment.

Our parents—aunts and uncles—did not mind especially if we were all playing in Libod. Here, left to our own devices, we devised our own games, things and stuff and in the long run, made memories which we can only consider ours. In the open yard of our grandparents’ compound, my parents ancestral house—we were free to play. The space, the time, the freedom given to us by our ginikanan (parents) allowed our imagination to create things that pleased us. And when we played our games, we did not only kill our boredom; we also made some things worth remembering.

In those days, a child’s play was also his passion, if not his “profession.” If my nephews Yman and Yzaak play their Ragnarok or Pokemon cards today, I also collected my own set of tex cards and lastiko (goma or rubber bands). In those days, to have your own box of tex cards or a string of lastiko was like to have invested well in stock market. In our time and place, these were the child’s prized possessions.

The game of tex and lastiko went side by side. For each player’s turn, we flicked three cards—my own and those of two other opponents and added up the numbers of the cards facing up. He whose cards faced up with the highest sum won. For the bets, we piled tens or twenties or even hundreds of rubber bands of grouped colors. The winner took all these wagers.

We would do this routine until someone among us knew he’s collecting the cards of all the rest. Anyone who refused to continue playing after he’d won big was called saklit. Having gained such reputation, he would be avoided by others. In my case if I began to win big, I just felt lucky if my playmates parents summoned them to run an errand or already asked them to go home. That formally excused me from gaining the “ill repute.”

In our sixth grade, my classmate Michael Arimado from Triangulo was the “official” King of Tex and lastiko, having won over every other classmate from Baybay, Iraya and even Tigman. He was undisputed. Like a small-time Mafia, Michael would hang his long string of lastiko on his neck, while he swung his sinampalok (tamarind-shape bolo) during our hawan (weeding) sessions in Mr. Olarve’s Industrial Arts class.

At recess, he would invite Edgar Bayola or Sulpicio Purcia to challenge him at the back of the Marcos Type Building. Talk of the early days of UFC. In these Days of Pre-Physical matches, Michael would win big and reclaimed his “title” now and again.

It came to me that I could be like Michael. So gradually I went to start “collecting” my own set, by playing other classmates and betting my own sets of cards and lastiko. When I became fond of tex, it wouldn’t be long till I had won my own box and some 500 pieces of lastikong sinaralapid (braided rubber bands of various colors) which I now hung like the two snakes of Zuma’s, the Aztec-inspired character I read on Aliwan Komiks.

Like my classmate Michael, I had become a self-declared King of Tex in my own right, through my own tex, sweat and cheers. But this glory would be short-lived; I would soon declare “bankruptcy” of this investment after Mother discovered my necklace-length collection of lastiko. She must have thought I was already distracted in my studies so she asked Manoy Awel to burn this “investment” one evening when he was cooking our kinusidong abo for supper. No questions asked. Barely having arrived from an errand, I tried to save them from the stove but it was too late. That night I cried the hardest and the loudest.

In those days it was great to be a child.