It wasn’t long after I came home back in June 24, 2002 that I decided to visit Gerard Alegrid in his home found on a block right next to ours. I still felt a bit jetlagged after more than a days worth of traveling halfway around the world and been out of the country for a year and 2 months.

         Right in front of their gate, I was calling Gerard’s name. Thank heavens, he’s at home (the new school year had already started that time but I was freshed out from finishing Grade 5 weeks earlier). He was startled to see me, just as how I was surprised to see him, with thick hair!

   He let me inside their house and get reacquainted. I found out he’s in his final year in grade school attending Saint Mary Montessori, my now-former school of seven years. Many of our batchmates transferred to other schools like, St. Jude Academy-Malinta, Children of Mary Immaculate College, San Diego Parochial School, Notre Dame of Greater Manila, and the list goes on.

       I asked him if he still knows Angelique’s phone number at home, I was really excited hearing her voice again. He does and dialled her number for me. trhough the phone, I let her know that I finally came home!
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     A few days later, I was in my room (then sharing with my brothers) doing nothing (because the house just went through a recent renovation). I heard someone calling out someone’s name outside, but I didn’t bother see who it is. But the name-calling continued.

   Not long, my dad called me from downstairs saying I have visitors waiting for me outside. So I finally took a good look on what was going on outside and saw a few familiar faces: Zack, Gerard, Mark, Michael, and Carlos.

            Ecstatic to see them after a long time. I went downstairs and was like “Oh! Napadito kayo! Ang tagal na, ha?!”.  I couldn’t say it in words but one way to describe it maybe is that I was speechless because I really can’t believe that  my friends went all the way to my place so that they could hold a mini-reunion-slash-welcome home party for me!

   During the mini-reunion, I proposed an idea for all of us in our batch to hold a grand reunion of sorts but every attempt to do so was met with little success. The last one, during Allyson’s debut, failed to attract batchmates including me.

But I still haven’t gave up on the hope that this reunion would eventually push through. Even if it’s been almost seven years after I left Montessori:D

    I noticed that quite of a few of my contacts are putting up retrospective entries on their Multiply websites so I thought it won’t be bad if I had one too, other than the last one I entered 24 hours ago.

    I told you guys last time about me being able to find the time to organize my old high school pictures in my photo album. Well, there’s more to it than that. Yesterday, my mom was the first to initiate organizing all the photos that haven’t been placed on photo albums. I was able to see pictures of me when I was younger. Man oh man, were those the years!

   Hitting the road down memory lane sure fill me with loads of good memories. I admit that as a child I was a bit bratty, a bit spoiled, a wee bit hyper, and a kina hysterical at times. When I’m happy, I’m happy. When I’m sad, I’m sad. When I wanna laugh so hard, I laugh. When I wanna cry out so loud that the world may know that their being unfair to me, I do. When I wanna be destructive, I’d gladly do that (as a child, I could unlock a padlocked door using a plastic pole combined with loads of childhood adrenalin :P).

     Embarassing, yes. But not as embarassing as those pictures of myself doing those “pa-cute cute” faces. I do a “pogi pose”, a “happy” pose, and a “smiley” pose, whenever I’m front of the camera. I think that trait is still alive within me, I do get a bit hyper every now and then. I don’t think there was ever a picture in my first 10 years of my life since the development of my consciousness that I don’t smile like there’s no tomorrow.

    What’s surprising though was that I also observed that I pretty much gained weight, or in short: grew fat, starting at age 10 onwards. It peaked I guess until high school when I reached a hundred and sixty pounds. But between comparing how I looked like when I was in 3rd grade and in 4th grade (take note: one year apart!), I grew from being thin like a skull as shown in a picture of me visiting Barosoain Church in Bulacan for his annual school field trip to an inflated oval-faced chubby boy with glasses visiting the Manila Zoo as part of his 4th grade field trip.

       That reminds me, I’ll be celebrating 7 years wearing glasses. January 5, 2001 was the time when my mom decided I should finally wear glasses after suffering for almost a year being unable to see things clearly from afar (me reading in the dark ala Jose Rizal right in the middle of a typhoon surge greatly contributed to that). I’ve already changed eyeglasses for about eight times already. The most number of changes would 2 back in 2001 and the shortest possible tenure “recorded” would be the one I bought in Ilocos last April 2007 until August 2007 (during my course card distribution).

       Starting in high school, that was when I slowly faded from the pictures taken for social gathering of my age group and quickly made a niche taking pictures myself. The “unofficial” photographer in my batch, using my trusty “old reliable” Fujifilm Coolpix, TPaS Olympus camera, and not-so-reliable Nikon Finepix throughout my four years in high school.

   By the time I got to college, I realized that I cannot be the kind of person that I was in high school. Although I don’t find it necessary to drastically change who I am, what should change is how people would wanna perceive of me as a person. In my early childhood, I was the “iyakin”, in SJA I was the “goofy-naive-akala nila taga-US siya” type of guy (I don’t know if that last one still stuck on those who still view me as such).

Thus, I decided I should loosen up a bit, not feel so isolated from the rest of society (pero di ako emo kailanman, ha?), open-minded more , and take the serious side out of me (unless it’s necessary on things that should be taken on a lighter note. Maturity comes with age, and I guess that I’m already in that process of being one myself.

Learning things from your past experiences make us appreciate life more. From the bridges that we burned down there wil arose new ones being built while wounds inflicted from hurt may have healed, a scar will serve as a reminder of what it used to be, a scar.

I guess, all I want to say is that life is mysterious. Family, friends, events, tragedies….all of them shapes a person into who he or she is. Looking back, I can’t help but remember that the things that made me smile, cry, embarass, sad, feel humilated, and all those other stuff made me a better person if not the best. I know that there’s stil a long road for me. Nevertheless, I’m ready to face it as I exit memory lane in order face a brand new day.

Thanks!