'Maestro, Memory!'

Scenario: The early ’80s. In a lounge of a five-star Makati hotel that has a live orchestra playing music nightly.

A singer-starlet approaches the conductor to tell him she wants to sing — just one song. The conductor obliges, of course. She regularly tips them generously. Where she gets the money — that’s military secret.

And so she stands in front of the microphone on a platform and instructs the conductor: “Maestro, Memory!”

The song Memory was one of the hit tunes that time since Cats had already opened in Broadway earlier.

The orchestra therefore starts to build up into a crescendo to the melody of Memory from Cats: “Midnight … not a sound from the pavement …”

The face of the singer-starlet begins to crumple. “You got it wrong! Memory begins like this: Memory, light the corner of my mind.”

Barbara Streisand could have strangled her had the world’s entertainment icon been there. Anyone who is even remotely familiar with music will tell you that the song the starlet-singer wanted to render was titled The Way We Were from the Hollywood film.

I wasn’t there when that real-life comedic incident happened. I heard that from veteran PR-journalist Ernie Pecho, who related to me the story many years after that took place.

I doubt if Ernie still remembers that episode. I bet he doesn’t remember either the night of the CMMA awards presentation at the Villa San Miguel in 1990. He was upset that evening and I can remind him if needed, but really, that brief chapter is so minute in the scheme of his life — and in mine. However, that is still stored in my memory bank.

Oh, memories … I still recall most of these, details and all, in my head.

But it was only recently that I acknowledged — realized, actually — that I had been given the gift of having a retentive memory.

I am not saying this to brag because like in any kind of quality or ability that, too, has its downside.

Like intelligence, that can work for either good or bad, depending on how you use it. You can be extraordinarily bright, but go the way Ferdinand Marcos went — or decades later, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. It’s up to you to choose the path to infamy given such brilliance.

Or how can I forget this classic line courtesy of the conceited Miss Piggy: “My beauty is my curse!”

Yes, being born beautiful can also be a burden to some. Think St. Rose of Lima, who was born with a lovely face, but kept rubbing lime on it to make her ugly and undesirable to men since she was determined never to surrender her virginity and keep herself pure until she met our Creator.

Today, vitamins are sold for memory enhancement. Is there a pill to blot out some of mine? Please take away the harsh ones to help me move on with my life.

It was Dad who first spotted my ability to remember even the littlest details and when these happened. I was seven that time.

He said it was called photographic memory. I always dismissed that as photogenic memory and that made him laugh. As I grew older, I said once that it was pornographic memory. He was not amused and I never repeated that sick joke.

When I reached puberty, he gave me a serious lecture on how I should refrain from pleasuring myself because that translated to memory loss and he never wanted me to lose what he insisted was talent.

It turned out that some of my equally young male classmates with raging hormones also got from their daddies a warning to serve as deterrent from engaging in such activity. Awaiting them was a more horrendous repercussion: They’d go blind.

And so I continued collecting — and fully retaining — memories in my mind. I remembered in full color events of family gatherings — who brought this food and that in our potlucks. Or what my mother served at home when our family played host. Even conversations I recall. At times, what everyone wore.

The gift of memory also served me well in school. Way till my final year in college, I almost always got a perfect score in any history exam. Save for Oriental history because of those Indo-Chinese names I couldn’t pronounce and didn’t care to ingest. 

I only did poorly in academics because of mathematical computations. To this day, I refuse to even learn how to solve those. Why, I can’t even count change in a store. Business will collapse on my first day at work if I get hired as a cashier of any establishment.

But what I can do for them is retrace company history when they turn silver and put this down in writing. I don’t even have to be there during the groundbreaking rites or on the actual day it was founded. However, you have to tell me early enough its beginnings and I will relate to you all the events decades later.

Startalk was a full four years old when I got there, but I act as the show’s chronicler. I only have to put together tales I heard in my first few months there from the program’s pioneers.

That was basically how I helped put together the Eat, Bulaga! book that is now on its second printing and will be sold soon in National Bookstore.

Entries in the book’s early chapters were based from my memory (due to the absence of records), but the facts were checked and counterchecked with key people who were already in the show from the beginning. Sometimes, their recollections didn’t even tally and we had to dig even deeper into the inaccuracies and investigated further until the pieces matched.

Like what I said during the book launch, the Eat, Bulaga! history I wrote may not be a hundred percent accurate. But again, which history is?

Forgive me for not spending every single lunch in front of the TV during the show’s infancy. I had other activities to pursue — like go to school, for example.

But Joey de Leon must still be assuming that I am at least a hundred years old because he is amazed at how I know those trivial little matters that happened way before my time.

Unfortunately, now that I am again turning a year older, I feel that bits and pieces saved in my memory are already beginning to crumble. That is part of the aging process of the human body and brain.

The older people also tend to be forgetful because they have a far more serious case of information load compared to the young. As you advance in years, you meet more people and there are more birthdays of newer friends and relations (in-laws, nephews and grandchildren) to remember.

The successful ones have more material acquisitions and you have to know the state of each property. Where did you keep lot titles? How much money did you put in this and that bank, especially for those who believe in not putting all eggs in one basket?

Diligently jotting down those details is easier said than done. Unless you had opted for complete retirement, your schedule will just get busier and busier.

I am still in the thick of my profession and writing isn’t the only job I do. If I panic looking for my car key that doesn’t necessarily mean I am beginning to be more forgetful. Perhaps. But really I was already that way even as a kid, who never remembered that I left a toy in my pant pockets and would have the entire house searching for it to stop my tantrums.

Little objects I never remember where I kept. But basically, save for a few lapses, I can say that the memory is still there — maybe 90 percent.

I swear my Dad was wrong.