The long and short of ArtPetron ‘Lumang Laro’

People from all walks of life have played games for thrills and to add amusement to an otherwise dull life. Playing games means funtime with friends. The discipline and camaraderie that young children develop while playing games are most significant. As adults, the same principles are at play in school and the workplace. How well one is able to interrelate with others is "the name of the game."

Petron Corporation recently opened a new avenue for young, aspiring artists to render on canvas the expressions of joy and triumph of children playing Pinoy indigenous games on "ArtPetron, Lumang Laro, Bagong Likha," an art painting contest which has generated much interest from college students all over the country. Over 300 artworks in oil/acrylic and watercolor medium have been submitted for the preliminary screening of entries. The 30 winning artworks for the final judging are currently on exhibit and sale at Petron Megaplaza, 358 Sen. Gil Puyat Ave. The final awarding of six winners will be held on Aug. 22 at the Petron Megaplaza.

Two interesting personalities look back to their youth and share with us some of their fun-filled moments. Here is the long and short of it:

The barrio doctor plays games

For the illustrious member of the Senate, Dr. Juan M. Flavier, growing up as a small boy in Tondo and later in Balatoc, Benguet when his father worked as a mechanic in the mines, childhood life meant playing taguan, patintero, tumbang preso and the memorable sabong-sabongan. In this make-believe cockfight, Sen. Flavier narrates that he and his playmates stood on one leg, with both hands at the back. The objective was to outbalance the opponent with skillful and deliberate movements of shoulders and legs.

The fun part, he says, was when both players fell to the ground. Players could continue fighting for as long as hands remained positioned in the back. There was much cheering in the crowd and the loser, he says, earned a pitik in the ear or on the groin.

"During full moons, it was extra-special," Flavier muses. He and other children played night games like tubig-tubigan and taguan under the bright lunar glow. "During those days, there was no need for props. We were very poor and nobody could afford to buy anything. Chalk and sand during those days were considered a luxury. But we had fun with whatever was available," he explains.

During summer, he and his friends would search for spiders, particularly those that thrive near electric wires, for it was believed to be the stronger breed. Placed in empty matchboxes before a fight, he says that they would prepare the tingting or palm midrif which served as arena to the two live spiders. Flavier says the "battle atop the tingting usually ended with one spider encasing the other in its web, and ending the battle with the death bite."

Later as a young barrio doctor with a growing family, Johnny, as he is fondly called, would make toy cars from sardine cans and other scrap material, and airplanes from used tongue depressors for the children. Sen. Flavier confessed that he did not really have the ambition to serve as a doctor in Manila but was happy and content with being a "barrio doctor." The toys that he had made are cherished by his children today.

"We also make kites from old newspapers and carved trumpo (spin top) ourselves from bayabas wood because the material was said to be resilient."

Little Tricks

Asked about daya (cheating), the senator laughs and narrates some of their little old tricks (not in government), but in these early games. "We played the game of biyakan where we would cut a nut in half. Sometimes, we would put alketran to put together an already broken nut. Our opponent would have no idea that the nut that we were trying to break had already been broken. On some occasions, we would put bubog on the tail of the kite so that we could cut close our opponent’s kite and pull it down to the ground," he muses.

Hi-Tech Games

After four children and seven grandchildren, Sen. Flavier, now 66, believes that the glory days of the Pinoy indigenous games are over. The advent of technology and personal computers have provided a better and safer alternative to playing in the streets. The influx of cheap Tamiya cars has sidelined the sardine cans.

However, the senator believes that the portrayal of the early Pinoy games on canvas in ArtPetron has its merits. "This art event will have lots of historical value, cultural bearing and information for the present and future generations of Filipinos to get a glimpse of and appreciate the kind of life we had before," he says.

"It is not important for the youth to still play the early games. Today, one can have everything at the click of a button. It has become irrelevant. Translating these old games in art, however, is a good form of exercise for the youth," he emphasizes.

* * * A love affair with Lucy

For George (Dyords) Javier, noted comedian and actor, early childhood days were spent with his cousins in his father’s farm in Javier town in Leyte.

Dyords vividly remembers the excitement and thrills of their Sunday carabao races called sunga. He and his cousins played along the beach by the family-owned farm, or took a lazy stroll up and down the small hills and slopes of the vast hacienda riding his favorite carabao, Lucy, whom his cousins teased him as his "girlflriend."

After a rainy break, it was hunting time for Dyords and his playmates for salagubang and salaginto (brown and green beetles). Dyords recalls how he and his cousins would turn up leaves and branches of still wet trees in search of the insects, and upon finding them would put them to sleep by cupping and shaking them inside their palms, amid bursts of childish laughter.

On bright nights brought by the glow of the full moon, when every child in town would neither rest nor sleep, Dyords and the other children showed up on the streets to play tubig-tubig or the Tagalog version of patintero. Just like Sen. Flavier who did not have much resources, Dyords and his friends would use water to draw the lines and safe boxes of the taya and "runners."

Turning from melancholy to serious, Dyords ponders the fast-dying legacy of the early games.

The hazard nowadays of playing in the streets and children being introduced to gore and violence by the electronic games today has reduced the pleasant interaction you can only experience in traditional games.

Reliving early games

"Natural sources of fun which helped the child to be creative and articulate had deferred to a laid-back personality coming from the so-called modernization," Dyords muses. That’s why every now and then, Dyords takes his family for an overnight trip to some remote beach or a camp-out weekend at a cousin’s horse ranch in Batangas, to teach the kids games the old-fashioned way like scouring the beachshores for tiny seashells used in a once-popular Pilipino boardgame called sungka, or to revel at, and at times, try their hand at catching glittering fireflies at night.

In the early Pinoy games, children learned to interact with other children. The movement of the arms and legs inherent in these games developed the physical and mental faculties of the children.

If Dyords describes today’s games as making children "laid-back," Sen. Flavier muses that in today’s games, the only part of the body that is exercised is the tongue.

Times have really changed. But going back to the basics of playing games, Dyords says, "How you fly your kite is how you live your life," and for Johnny, playing these games may not be important today but learning about them through art is a worthwhile experience. "If our youth can see early Pinoy life and games, even just through artworks in ArtPetron then it is truly worth something,"Flavier concludes.