I AM ALMOST DONE:This blog is getting to be fun...even before I go to sleep, I try to recall those years gone by. Memories of my childhood vividly comes to life again. While laying down to take a nap "schools" have come to mind. Since I don't really nap anymore these days (just lay down to rest), with closed eyes, the old scenarios of yesteryear became real again.
THE SCHOOLS;
I had mentioned about my first encounter with schools...and will not repeat those moments here. The schools I attended:
Paco Catholic School
Paco Elementary School
Lucban Elementary School
Mandaluyong Elementary School
Centro Escolar University High School (for Boys)
Philippine Dental College
I was grade three when WWII broke...transferred to Lucban Elementary for the 4th grade. I can't remember what happen then because suddenly I was not in school anymore but enjoyed the free roaming and gallivanting time in the city with friends. After the war, we lived in Mandaluyong; a suburb of Manila. Then and there started a nightmare for me. My father enrolled me in school as grade six...with the rational that I had to recover the lost years of not going to school and also not being left behind by my same age contemporaries.
The medium of studies in the Philippines is English. We were still a Commonwealth and will not have our Independence from United States till later. We don't have the same system like here in America. Primary to Elementary is six years, no junior high school. From six grade you go to regular high school. The hours are long, not like here.
The subjects that we have to study in elementary were;
LANGUAGE - learning the basics of the English language, the subjects and predicates of a sentence. How to use adjectives, adverbs, verbs etc.
READING - we are assigned to read books and learn comprehensions.
SPELLING - of course this is words of the English language
ARITHMETIC - numbers all the way.
HISTORY - those days, American history
TAGALOG - the national language of the Philippines
HEALTH SCIENCE - good manners and right conduct
INDUSTRIAL ART FOR BOYS AND HOME ECONOMIC FOR GIRLS - boys learn how to make usable things for the house and girls are taught the basics of cooking and sewing.
In High school "Language" became "English," "Arithmetic" became "Mathematics." Industrial Arts became PMT or Preparatory Military Training. The girls still have Home Economics. "History" was about the"Modern Times and the Living Past." "Spanish" is added with the "Tagalog." In high school, we have several teachers that specialize in each subject.
Sports that are played in school were basketball and sometime softball.
Extracurricular activities were rehearsals for plays or musicals...sometimes an operetta for the school anniversaries. I can't remember any field trips at all.
Everything was focused on study, study and study by the book.
There are no "bullies" in the school. If there was one, I had not met any. Most of the kids were well behaved or at the very least they will deal not only with their parents but the principal as well.
In primary and elementary, since both are public schools; don't require uniforms.
In high school, khaki pants and white shirts was the uniform of the day in school. The girls in high school wore a specially designed white inform with pink pippings on the sailor collar and a pink tie.
I am not good in math. It just won't stick in my head how those "X's," " Y's" and other symbols work together and finding the sum of "Z." I barely passed that subject even when I was in college taking physics and calculus. That's for sure I was not to be an Einstein.
I love to read. After school in high school, I didn't go home right away but would stop by at the USIS library. I discovered this to be a better library than the local one we had. The books gave me the chance to fantasize about different places, and gave me the chance to learn earlier about many things that school never taught us. We always had a newspaper everyday. My father liked to read detective and western novels in paperbacks. We had quite a collection of them and I eventually started reading them. His favorites were Zane Grey's books. He read other books...I read "Forever Amber," the "Decameron's" and "Don Juan"(thought it was very racy then), "The Three Musketeers," "Count of Monte Cristo," "Madame Bovary" to mention a few. I have a collection of comic books, "Captain America," "Plastic man," "Batman and Robin," "Superman," the "Submarine man," and other superheroes of the comic world...amazing that few of these heroes still exist today.
Centro Escolar University before the war was exclusively for girls. My father enrolled me there when they opened their doors for the boys. At that time I hated being a high school student there. I was ashamed to tell people where I went to school...because when I told them, they would give this look that would say: that's a girl school. I had no choice but finished my high school there, being one of the boys who graduated there first. I guess, because I hated that school, I did not excel academically in high school...but did graduate. As time passed by, I was able to have my AA degree (pre-med) there too. This was different. I was able to pick up pieces here and there and did well. I excelled in subjects like anatomy (I was given the nickname of "Mr. Grey" the author of the textbook we were using). I had two semesters of "body anatomy' and later took "head and shoulder" when I shifted to dentistry. I was good in Chemistry, Psychology, Physiology but not in Trigonometry and Calculus...my menaces. In dental school, I made the best tooth replicas from soaps...that was my first sculpting class.
I always looked forward to holidays and the school breaks when my time was my own and wouldn't belong to school for a while. I spent the weekends roller skating at the Rizal Memorial Stadium and sometimes we'd go to Quezon City public park for this...roller skating the whole afternoon.
GIRLFRIENDS:
My first girlfriend (puppy love) was when I was in grade two. There was this classmate that lived somewhere on the other side of the railroad tracks that I mentioned previously where we'd wait for the train. We walked to school together and went back home together too. She would be upset if going home, I will be with other boys instead and she made sure to tell my mother when she passed our house. I wonder what happened to here...huh! I did not have any girlfriend in high school, although some of my friends started to "bloom." I was a late bloomer and did not have a girlfriend until I was in college...her name was Alice. I was never serious in getting involved like most of my friends. I don't know why in those days, but thinking about it now, I am sure that I wanted to do something with my life before getting serious and get tied up in matrimony.
I had a riff with my father...I quit school and traveled. I lived with my maternal grandparents for a while. I went to Guam and worked at the Air Force Base for three years. Back to Manila, I was uneasy and decided to joined the US Navy in Sangley Point. It was tough joining...your are given written test exams that I found out later were very biased...I found out as a culture shock that those American "kids" in my company were dumb as could be. Out of 37 who took the exam, I was one of the five that was accepted that day. Sometime, I will relate some of my experiences while in the Navy.
OUR HOUSEHOLD:
My mother ran a dress shop and my father went to their dental office (shared with his eldest brother, my grandfather was deceased then). Even though we always had a maid, my mother did the cooking. She would send the maid to the market with a list of what to buy for the days' meal. We were taught to clean house, do our beds and sometimes even iron our favorite clothes to wear on a certain occasion. Being the eldest of a sister and four brothers, the burden of taking care of them was put on my shoulders. My brothers were practically my wards. It was not always a happy home. My father was a womanizer "par excellence." Thou at times I urged my mother to get rid of him...divorce was not common and the church does not sanction that. So, here we are "other woman" after another, my mother will ask me to come with her and together we will confront the "other woman." My mother had cracked many faces of those women with her shoes (similar to the wedgies in fashion lately, but the shoe was entirely made of wood and they were heavy)....the affair would end but would resume with other women as time passed by. I know that I have other siblings somewhere as the result of his womanizing. In spite of that, I think it was a normal Filipino household.
The chapter of my child is almost done now. I will come and edit them once in a while when something comes to mind. I am sure that there are some events that I have missed but it will come eventually and I will log them here.
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