sugar and spice

            After living in a dormitory all of our four years in high school, my friend Hazel and I had gotten quite familiar with the Parent’s Instruction Sheet a.k.a. the PIS.  As the name implies, this document contains a list of instructions that the parents or guardians of students living in a dormitory have provided for the dorm manager, to whom they have entrusted their children.  In UP’s Kalayaan, where most of the residents are underage, the PIS is in a questionnaire form.  There is a list of questions that is answerable by a YES or NO that the parents fill up regarding what their children can or cannot do while they lived in the dorm. 

My mother answered my high school PIS with me and at 12 years old I was able persuade her to give me a very liberal PIS.  She had answered all the questions with a YES, merely qualifying some items like - weekends with people other than my guardian with a ‘with guardian’s permission’ (meaning I would have to inform my guardian first about spending the weekend elsewhere).  By the time I was 14 years old, all items were answered with an unqualified YES.

UP had a different set of questions but because I had gotten used to being able to do whatever I want, within the house rules, I was surprised to find out that my mom (answering the PIS with Hazel’s mother) had answered NO to a couple of items. 

Even if freshman undergrad is close to a decade ago and I don’t remember what items were in the PIS, I distinctly remember what I wasn’t allowed to do.  These were, after all, going to rule my activities or rather the exceptions to the freedoms I had gotten used to.  Baffled by the sudden restrictions, I asked my mother what I wasn’t allowed to do.  However, unlike the Legalistic Child, I also asked why I couldn’t do the things she said I couldn’t.

I was not allowed to join rallies and demonstrations.  This item was not in my high school PIS but UP, being the school that it is, had provided for that eventuality in their PIS.  This was a big thing and I think that our parents were just worried that we were idealistic enough and easily persuaded to join in such activities without thinking of the possible consequences of such a choice, we were after all just 16.  I didn’t agree with them but there being no issue I was passionate about at that time, I didn’t argue.  I figured if there was an issue I felt I needed to stand up for, I fell strongly enough about it to go against my parents ‘rules’.

The second item was innocuous enough which made it more surprising and harder to understand.  I was not allowed to leave the dorm before 6am. When asked about it, my mom merely replied that she couldn’t think of any reason for me to be out that early, ergo the rule.  It sounded so arbitrary and very reminiscent of the times I lived at home. 

As children when my brothers and I questioned some of the rules my mom made, she had always answered “Because I said so” not wanting or not knowing how to explain to us why we were not allowed to do certain things.  And as she was the mom, that was the rule - even if we don’t understand it.  However, because I was no longer a child, I was also no longer satisfied with answers like that.  I tried to look for scenarios, no matter how far fetched wherein I would need to be out that early.  The best and most plausible I could come up with, the distress of the restriction stifling my creativity was jogging.  I asked what if Hazel and I wanted to go jogging at 5:30 in the morning.  The answer I got sadly was to wait until 6am when the dorm doors officially open.

          I learned to read, write and (if I follow the logic that reading and writing skills come with thinking processes) think in kindergarten.  So on came the next twenty years on my life with me contentedly reading almost everything I could get my hands on.  I didn’t write much until I started blogging but even then that was just thinking aloud or should I say, thinking in print.  I talk a lot and typing what I’m thinking is just me talking when no one is around.  There wasn’t any structure and the main purpose was usually just to let out steam.

          I remember having some problems in my final integration paper for my undergraduate course.  The team had decided to write in Filipino (as to bring the material closer to the people, make it more reachable and not too highfaluting) and I was lost in translation.  Most of our material was in English plus Word autocorrects and my brain processes in English so there’s a slight delay every time I had to translate. Also details have to be written in a manner that will facilitate ease of reading and small nuances have to be placed creatively to make it a more meaningful read.

          Now I find out that not only can I not write, neither can I read properly at least not critically. And even the stuff I learned in kindergarten i.e. Dr. Seuss, Goldilocks and the Three Bears and Puff the Magic Dragon did not mean what I thought they meant when I was reading them.  Not that I completely misread them, it’s just that there is lot more to the material than I originally thought there was.

For my humanities subjects, although I did pretty well in them, I had a bit of a problem with over reading literature.  Yes, I thought some of the stuff was being over read.  I mean to say, a lot of the literature was being given more value that what the authors probably meant them to have like Puff.  I wonder what was wrong with actually taking things at face value.  However, if I give more credit to the authors and they actually mean all those other things that the words in their ambiguity could mean.  Then I might actually learn more and experience more from the things I read.

In studying law, it seems I need to learn how to read, write and ultimately think differently.  Originally I thought it takes all the fun out of reading (something I really love to do but now don’t have time for, reading assignments not counted) but on the other hand, it opens up a whole new world.  Sort of like a different dimension to everything I was reading before.  It’s like falling into a rabbit hole or going through the looking glass.  It makes me wonder what I missed out on in all those material I read the last twenty years.

          Last weekend, while I was in Davao, my family and I watched The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest as a family bonding activity.  I was seated with my two brothers Arthur (who is 22 years old) and Abdul (who will be turning 20 this year) while my youngest brother Alec (5 years old turning 6 this year) was seated between my parents in the row in front of us.  As was usually the case when neither the kuyas’s nor I was seated with Alec, I began to worry.  I believed that movie viewing for kids his age should be properly guided and I don’t exactly trust my mom to do that because usually she doesn’t understand the context (especially fantasy or the like genre i.e.  X-Men, the Lod of the Rings, etc.) either.  I think this is because of a bit of generation gap and my mom doesn’t read stuff like that.  However, as my dad was there too, I relaxed a little and proceeded to enjoy the movie.

On our way home, the expected happened.  My mom complained that she didn’t understand the movie much. 

Reasons:

“Was it because I didn’t watch the first movie?”, she asked.

“No, it’s really a bit hard to understand because, Jack Sparrow likes to confuse his men with his logic to a point that he ends up confusing the audience as well” according to Papa.  He was referring to Johnny Depp’s character’s penchance for long winded reasoning that he (Depp/Sparrow) contradicts as soon as his men asks questions to clarify. 

“Mama, because it’s in Chinese.” quips Alec.

Obviously, the last statement blew me away.  It confirmed my worse fears.  My brother didn’t understand anything.  He probably was overwhelmed by the action scenes and the visual effects that he didn’t realize that the Pirate was speaking English.  He mistook the Pirate’s heavily accented English as being another language (well, sometimes it almost is anyway, so I can’t really blame him).  I wondered what sort of reasoning processes he must have gone through to get to that conclusion.  Or maybe for kids it doesn’t really matter.  All that’s important is his own interpretation of the movie and whether or not he enjoyed it.

I still maintain that kids should be supervised by a knowledgeable adult in watching movies though. So that somebody can explain the story and it’s context whether or not the kid asks questions.

*copied from cd egroup post

hi guys!

yes, i’m back in manila (due to consistent public
demand …despite strong family objections)… i
think they thought of it sort of like emotional
blackmail…baka ma-depress ako if they don’t let
me… (i wonder where they get their ideas… too much
tv probably) anyway, issue din naman yata sa kanila
what i’m gonna do if i don’t go back to school… (i
could work din naman you know but circumstances being
as they are…i dont think they considered that)

i’m ok, i think (hindi yon medical opinion) and i’m
keeping myself busy to keep my mind off things…yung
nga lang some people wonder at my choice of
"distractions" but no pressure… m just here for the
education… hehe

having fun pa naman…kulit ng mga proff at
blockmates… which reminds me, does leonen have
anything against our college? kasi ilang beses nya
nahiritan when he took over our class… (quote: you
are entering a hostile environment…this is not the
college of social work :endquote … where students
sit in a circle with the professors playing ice
breakers all day) aminin medyo totoo naman pero what’s
with that?

anyway, i’m still in a state of elevated adiposity
(that’s a new term i learned from one of my tita’s
psych readings…)but m losing the weight (i think) so
baka makilala nyo na ako next time makita nyo ako
around. mwahaha

incidentally, i do want to keep in touch with you
guys… lalo na m in UP most of the time… (sa lib na
nakatira… exciting life ko dba?… at least hindi na
hospital) but my phone got stolen a few weeks ago so i
lost everyone’s number… my new number is
915849205… and i’m online a lot ym: kix_sarenas.

sorry ngayon lang kwento, i dont get to write much
kaya kahit blog ko not updated.  my current rule
kasi…IF YOUR NOT READING, AT LEAST GET SOME SLEEP.
=>

cheska

ps. thanks uli dun sa mga nag-arrange ng bday dinner
at mga bumati… kahit wala akong phone! ang galing
nyo talaga.