BLUE & WHITE
Joaquin F. Perez, Jr.

Destiny


That we were really meant to be what we are now is a fact of life which most people might want to dispute but which I found out to be very true! Call it Predestination or whatever.

Whenever I recall most of the events in my life I unavoidably realize that all of them just had to happen in order for me to be where I am now at any particular instance in time. And when I say all I really mean ALL including all the “faux pa” which have helped a lot in shaping and reshaping all the redundant curves in my life!

When I was in Grade School all I really thought about was RECESS and DISMISSAL! Recess because I would be able to play with my classmates, eat at the cafeteria, and drink my favorite soda! Dismissal, because then, would be able to play, play, and play again! Studies were the exception rather than the rule then and I couldn’t care less! Everything was bright and rosy and I didn’t have a care in the world! Food, Clothing, and Shelter was bountifully provided by my Daddy who was one great hardworking doctor among a handful of great doctors then.

When High School came around I still insisted on the same all play and no work schedule even up to the point when I would not enter class just to be able to play pool at some nearby parlor which was also visited by most of my schoolmates. I became addicted to the game, most especially since no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t beat the wily hustlers who used to hang around like vultures waiting for dumbbells like me! Things went awry when aside from pool I gradually developed a taste for GIN! I started on a once a weekend basis which gradually developed into an almost daily basis! Consequently I was discharged (expelled if you like to call it that) and had to tour several high schools in Manila until I finally landed at “Katipunan University) or that place made famous as the APO Hiking Society!

College, after all the rip-roaring excitement in high school, was a drag! But by then my hormones started to cool down and I ventured into another stage of growing up: falling in love! Friends started going on their own trysts and gradually faded away from the hotrod scene! Falling in love of course, I later found out, was the hottest thing could ever hit anyone, and it got me almost on the first try! Sosmaryosep! Everything was a blur and all of a sudden I was deep into a relationship and planning to get hitched, just like that! I graduated at the bottom of our class, almost anyway, but I was still thankful that I was still able to because by then my wife was heavy with our first daughter, who, right now, has earned her medicine degree and is now blessed with 2 lovely daughters and living in the “land of the brave and home of the free” with her Dr. hubby who adores them all!

Well, now going back to my opening sentence I really still get goose pimples whenever I think of all these things that happened in my life, some unforgettably good, but some forgettable and lamentable! But through it all I clawed my way up without even thinking of anything else but the family I had to care for and loved! In fact, when I finally was able to take the Board and finally passed it, all by my lonesome, I still couldn’t believe I made it, if not for the copious tears streaming down my dad and mom’s eyes, and their shouts of joy thanking God for all His loving goodness and for seeing to it that my destiny, up to that point, was fulfilled, despite all the heavy odds!