Celebrating Me
School Days
School is like a zoo. Except the animals talk. - Anonymous
28. At five years, I went to kindergarten at Ang Ilaw (The Light), a makeshift school that was across the street from the Llenado house.
29. Teacher Mrs. del Rosario looked ancient, dressed in an old-fashioned kimona dress everyday.
30. She often slapped my left hand with a ruler when I wrote to train me to be right-handed.
First Brother's class pic at Ang Ilaw Kindergarten School. He's third from left on the last row. I don't have a class pic.
31. One had to be seven years old to start first grade but Dad, convinced that I was ready at six years, faked my birth and baptismal certificates (filling out a blank certificate from Lolo Gorio's book) and signing with flourish for two sponsors, the pastor, and Bishop Sobrepena.
32. Consequenlty, I got accepted at Moises Salvador Elementary which was walking distance from the Torio house, now built on the same premises as the Llenado property.
33. Mrs. Capili was my first grade teacher. From her, I learned all about minutes and seconds, and days, months, and year.
34. Miss Guerrero, my second grade teacher, was my Mum's favorite. She often gifted her with boiled saba bananas. Her dream was for me to be a teacher like her.
35. All I remember doing in Miss Losa's third grade class was polishing my side of the desk wih sandpaper.
36. Right around the end of fourth grade, I had chicken pox, so Mrs. Pasion exempted me from taking the final test.
I must be eight years old here and in 3rd grade. With brothers Rey (6), Dan (4), and Eddie (2). Looks like it was posed at a studio.
37. We all called my fifth grade teacher Miss Acosta kembot because that was how she walked, wiggling her hips.
38. Mum wanted me to be a folkdancer when in sixth grade, she watched my teacher Miss Bautista dance the tinikling during a school program.
39. I was elementary school Valedictorian for which I received a 100-peso award.
TEEN YEARS AND HIGH SCHOOL
They say teenaged years are the best years of your life. They also said Algebra would be useful. - Anonymous
40. I was 12 when I started high school at Ramon Avancena.
41. To go to school, I rode the Quiapo-Balic-Balic jeepney everyday for a ten- centavo fare.
42. I won several contests in my third year: first prize in Geometry construction and second prize for a Tagalog essay on Earth Day. I got second place in an inter-high spelling competition. The word I missed was apiary.
43. My best friend Victoria Posadas and I would buy for ten centavos an ice-cold coke to share at recess.
44. Although at first I thought boys were yucky, I made an exception that year with Jose Raneses, my first crush. I kept the Christmas card he gave me under my pillow the rest of the year.
45. That was the time when friendship meant you could spend the whole day doing nothing and still have the best time ever.
46. To this day, I still text high school friends Nini Rodriguez (she never married), Del Ballesteros-Gedang, Lita de Guzman, Pi (from the musically-renowned de Leon family), Amor Landas-Marcos, Sonny de los Santos, Romy Fayloga, and Tony Ejan.
47. I'd always been shy. I didn't attend senior prom when I learned that I was Prom Queen candidate and had to walk and parade for the competition.
48. I graduated valedictorian in high school for which I earned college entrance scholarship at the University of the Philippines in Diliman.
(To be continued)
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