This is the new word characterizing us ‘OLDER’ people, coined by Ernie Verdadero during our recent mini-reunion at Avenue Square’s ‘Little Asia’ (that cozy little nook serving affordable epicurean delicacies this side of Asia), attended by ‘Boy’ and ‘Telly’ Abella, ‘King and ‘Vic2’ Pasilaban, ‘Rudy’ Farjardo, and our Guest of Honor who just planed in from Seattle to be with his dying father, ‘Goyo’ Castilla.
Well, at least, if there’s one quality that our AdeN 66r Group (I was still ‘adopted’ even if I was ‘kicked out’ early on) does not have, that’s HYPOCRISY! We seem to have reached that stage in life when we consider FRANKNESS a trait worthy of respect and admiration. Its ‘liberating’ tendencies indeed allow us to face our PAST with candor while dissipating any nasty rumors and ‘intrigues’ that have the tendency to build up when ‘skeletons’ are surreptitiously hidden in our closets! Besides, we have known each other ever since our Elementary (Grade School) and High School days. So what’s there to ‘hide’?
“Wrangler” in my Encarta dictionary means: cowboy. Well, even if we can now afford to act like ‘cowboys’ (‘todo bale’ in our dialect), we’re just happy to be around each other acting like ‘senile’ kids (with graying and/or vanishing hair), shooting the breeze with all our loose talk, jokes, guffaws, and reminiscences (of our most embarrassing moments, and ‘lost loves’ especially)! It really is a very sad, ‘poor’ and pathetic man who has everything he wants but does not have friends to laugh (and ‘cry’) with! What good is it to have hectares of land, a lot of houses and buildings, expensive cars and jewelry, and millions in the bank, if all these cannot even make us laugh or feel human for even a minute?
It really is amazing how our ‘old rich’ classmate, Marianito A. (aka ‘Mr. Bean’), has managed to still be his ‘zany’ unaffected self despite all the ‘Patented Snobbery’ of the rest of his ‘moneyed’ peers! Of course he’s thrifty, but not a ‘Scrooge’! He also ‘SPLURGES’, if even just once a year, on his birthday (which I occasionally fail to attend). This guy must have been somewhere else when the Lord cast a ‘spell’ on the HANDS of the entire ‘Misers’ of the world; his remained SLIGHTLY opened!
The rest of us, like my good ‘compadre’, Ernie V. (who ‘scolded’ me, in not so many words, about my most recent ‘faux pas’ when I thanked Mayor Jessie for our San Felipe Asphalt Overlay, when it’s really 2nd District Congressman ‘Louie’ Villafuerte, who I should’ve really been thanking! Well, THANK YOU L.R.V.! Pls. just charge it to our being ‘wranglers’, or ‘rang-go’), have just enough ‘paper gas’ to keep us going till the ‘Finish Line’, but we’re not worried; our Faith in God and our Love (for everyone) has set us FREE! Even if Ernie lost in that recent Political Exercise, he has our Group and our sincere friendship and camaraderie to fall back on. Besides his losing, like my own ‘failings’, must’ve also strengthened his own beliefs in the ‘Destiny of Man’. It has also given him the time to meditate on just what Life is all about. Indeed, in the midst of all the recent ‘DYINGS’ of friends and acquaintances I too have been roused to the utter futility of Living for the sake of Living alone! Indeed, even if we cannot please all our children and everybody else we meet during this present ‘journey’, Life will really be more meaningful and fulfilling if everything we do and accomplish now is FOR THEM! Our Big Little man, King P., has always been like an inconsumable, volatile ENZYME catalyzing our Group into ONE interacting Celebration of Life and Friendship, in its most basic and genuine sense! Our ‘Top Gone’, ex-seminarian, scholarly writer, and academician, ‘compadre’ Greg Castilla, has been our self-effacing ‘Unifying Force’ ever since. His work or his ‘Almighty Dollar’ hasn’t gone to his head, to the point that he insists that only BICOL should be used in all our Emails!
This December 6th another Group of classmates, the Psychedelphians 68, is expecting me to attend our Ruby Reunion at the Ateneo de Manila H.S. Covered Courts, after a side trip to Boracay! It really seems like everybody is now in a hurry to renew old ties and assure ourselves that we still are part of the World of the Living even if we all know we are now in the Pre-Departure Terminal waiting for our names to be called by That Guy up there!
It really is just amusing how guys younger than us still insist on conquering their own personal ‘Everests’ and ‘HOARDING’ all the money and material possessions they can get their hands on, with all the zest of ‘maniacs’ blinded by their Almighty Greed, AS IF these were the End all and Be all of their existence; when conquering their Inferiority Complexes, Feelings of Inadequacy and Insecurity seem to be the real Bottom Line of all these! That Great Again Dictator, to my mind, was, undeniably, ‘Greed Incarnate’! He grabbed Land, Properties, Gold and Corporations left and right thinking that these would make him the most Powerful Man this side of Asia, who people will FEAR. Well, he got all these, and more. To prove, perhaps, that not all the Wealth and Power on Earth will be enough to make a man really happy, the Lord gave Ferdinand E. Marcos, much more than he asked for: He gave him Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, an incurable illness, indeed fit for the Proud and Incorrigible ‘Kings’ who already had their own ‘Messianic Complexes’!
To be called a ‘Wrangler’ at 58 isn’t much of a problem as not to be called anything by anybody at all! Even with all our Top and Teeth Gone, our stringy legs, flat bottoms, and ‘double visions’ (not to mention that ‘other’ dysfunction), we really still are the same old ‘crazy’ fun-loving High School Kids deep down inside, and no one can take that away from us! When we’re together our memories are our ‘Directors’, and the Whole World our ‘Stage’!
