For a while, with a heap of amusement, I stared at the graduation photograph of a young man â€â€Â barely 16 though not necessarily looking sweet â€â€Â in his yearbook. The zigzag bangs of his wavy hair landed on his wide forehead. His eyes were really a little chinky but on the shooting day for that grad pic, he managed to dilate them. His charcoal-black eyebrows were thick that at closer scrutiny they seemed unruly. His lips were plump that with a slight moving of his muscles in the mouth, he already appeared smiling. Those lips were actually turned cherry-red that day by the photographer who also doubled as makeup artist, but the black and white photograph in the yearbook did not give justice to the color. Or has it faded in time? He was wearing a necktie â€â€Â for the first time â€â€Â that scantily peeped out of his toga.
Then, while scratching my head, I cracked: "This was ‘Me’ when I graduated from high school in 1988." Nothing much has changed, I narcissistically told myself, except for a few strands of white hair that stubbornly crown me now no matter how much I try to hide them.
I continued to scan my yearbook photograph until my eyes led me to the words written below it. My name, just like the rest in that memoir book, was in bold letters, all caps. A little information about me was there, so were my accomplishments during the school year. Then I glanced at more blahs until I got to the "ambition" part. I almost fell off my chair when I read what I wanted to become in the future: "To be an Ambassador of Peace."
What? This can’t be true, I argued with myself as I brought the yearbook closer to my eyes. Why did I say that? I don’t know. When I was reading it, I felt like it was an entry in the application form of a contestant in a beauty pageant. In my section of 44 students, I was the only one with that kind of ambition. In my graduating class of 494 aspirants â€â€Â mind you I spent hours reading each one of them â€â€Â I was the only one who wanted to become an Ambassador of Peace. Others aspired to become teachers, engineers, nurses, businessmen, soldiers, criminologists, flight attendants, pilots, scientists, CPAs, lawyers, journalists, nutritionists, dentists, doctors, architects.
And me? I wanted to become an Ambassador of Peace. Whew! Pass me the crown and the scepter. Let me do my farewell walk.
| * * * |
Now I know why many people hide their yearbooks away from the prying eyes of soon-to-be critics. Others put them in the attic, allowing time to yellow their pages. Some relegate them to the bodega, oblivious that the passing of time drowns those tomes of memories in a sea of cobwebs. But like many artifacts, they will one day show up. And there’s no point of running away from them.
People are perhaps a little apprehensive to pick up their yearbooks because they are not really ready to laugh at themselves â€â€Â those men with geeky and dorky miens and ladies who could pass as bona fide members of "Spraynet Gang." But it’s fun to recall those days when everything was not yet complex and complicated. It was only when I looked at my high school graduation picture again that I realized my forehead was like a runway in the airport â€â€Â so wide a Boeing 747 that time could taxi on it. And I don’t feel uncomfortable telling all and sundry about this. Even if there was a technology that would make my forehead narrower, I wouldn’t dare avail myself of it. It’s the area that protects my brain, I am afraid if I have it touched my thinking sponge will also shrink.
| * * * |
Going back to what I really wanted to become when I was in high school, I pondered it was not that bad an aspiration to be an Ambassador of Peace. (Now I’m cringing again. I can hear myself really laughing in the inside). I guess I lived it when, in my fourth year, I transferred to the high school department of Laguna College of Business and Arts (LCBA) in Calamba after my former school Cabuyao Institute, where I spent my first to third year, closed to due to an unresolved wage conflict between many members of the faculty and the school management. Since I was new in LCBA, I made it a point to be at peace with every "old-time" resident. That’s where I honed my first few lessons in public relations because even fourth year students from other sections became my immediate friends and acquaintances. Soon, I was all over the school, chatting with everybody from all year levels, patching gaps between erring groups, contributing essays and feature stories to LCBA Chronicle, acting on stage plays, joining Glee Club contests, becoming a varsity volleyball player, campaigning for the Student Body Organization. For my one and only year in that school, because I was elected treasurer of the student body, I held the students’ funds. That was the first time I was entrusted a big sum â€â€Â about P18,000 from the less than 2,000 high school students of the school. When the student auditor checked the money at the end of the school year, I was beaming with pride when I turned over the funds even up to the last centavo of the remaining budget.
I would have not remembered all those details if it were not for my high school yearbook that greeted my eyes when one night I was looking for a document in my stack of what I call "dead" files. Since a yearbook is a repository of some pertinent information about our student life, it brings us back to the days of yore â€â€Â the days when dreaming was just a breeze away, when ideals are burning and beginning to take shape, when we are most carefree to be who we are, when we begin to fall in love and feel the pain and fall in love again.
Leaping through the pages of a yearbook is like getting reconnected to your old self that you have almost lost. My ambition entry in my high school memoir is something I have forgotten but it is also something I was very happy to find again. And this is coming from someone who, once upon a time, dreamt of becoming an Ambassador of Peace.
(For your new beginnings, please e-mail me at bumbaki@yahoo.com or my.new.beginnings@gmail.com. Have a blessed Sunday.)