Shopping with friends

The night before our date, I couldn’t sleep from excitement. I was so looking forward to the next day when I would go out shopping with my school friends. Can you believe that? We are all in our mid-sixties, were classmates from Grade 3 through high school, are really deep friends, and we’re going shopping. Of course, we are all retired now.

Earlier I had been to a bank to get me some cash. It was the first time I was using their ATM so I didn’t know how it worked. Well, I was planning on getting P8,000 for my shopping trip. Their machine dispensed P4,000 maximum. So I did it twice. The second time it beeped while I was putting the cash away and as I reached for the cash, the machine swallowed it again. Ooops! I got a third one, worried that I had lost the money. On my way home I bought myself an ice cream cone to assuage my bad feelings. All this meant that the next day I would have to return to report my money being swallowed by their ravenous machine, nothing that a delicious cone of chocolate ice cream wouldn’t soothe.

Early the next day I got dressed and made up for a day on the town with my old friends. The plan was Lydia, Bing and Elin would come together from Alabang. We would meet at the American Women’s Bazaar at the World Trade Center off Roxas Boulevard. We would go shopping there then we would meet Z — she doesn’t want her name mentioned so I won’t mention it; I will even disguise it — and C, who may also not want her name mentioned, for lunch somewhere on Pasay Road.

I was at the bank at a few minutes past nine and done in half an hour. I would not lose the cash. They agreed that their machine had a ravenous appetite. I didn’t know whether I would proceed or go back home and play solitaire. I knew from the past that they would be late and I would be on time. That’s the story of our personalities but it’s no big deal. I decided to proceed and walked around poking, looking, shopping alone until I ran into them. Then we were joined by Z and C. Apparently it was C’s first time at the bazaar and Z wanted to take her around. Let’s meet at the exit at 12:30, Lydia said.

Lydia and I, two jewelry enthusiasts, looked at the jewelry. Then Bing, Elin and I hit the food and bought the queso de bola thing from the Cucina de Tita Moning stand. At some point I brought them to the mosquito coil stall, where I could not resist buying a stand and colorful, fragrant citronella mosquito coils.

Mosquito coils are a thing of our childhood. We all grew up initially without air conditioners. I remember that our house in Sta. Mesa had big windows and electric fans. Also a lot of mosquitoes, so we would use mosquito coils. They came with their own tin stands with a tip that fitted into a slice in the center of the coil. Then you lit the other end with a match. We would set it on the tin cover of an ice cream can to catch the ashes as the coil burned all night, keeping the little wild mosquitoes away.

They were thrilled to find the mosquito coil stands and the new mosquito coils. “My grandchildren all smell of mosquito repellants because of the H-fever scare,” one of them said. “I will get some of these.” In fact, today’s mosquito coils are fragrant and made of natural citronella, no longer like the coils of old. Suddenly I am reminded of an old favorite book of mine, Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively. Moon Tiger, as romantic as it sounds, was a brand of mosquito coil in Egypt in the book. Mosquito coils are Asian and much older than we are.

The day went on. We had lunch together. We went to visit another classmate, whose mother had passed away the night before. She was supposed to be part of the group, too. Then we went to Greenhills and explored the shopping mall there. How it has changed! We checked out some spiffy new stores where I could buy a pair of black sandals with Bing. There we stopped for merienda of dinuguan and puto. I don’t think we shopped as much as ate and talked.

At the end of the day we were finally just in one car. We chatted incessantly. That is the fun thing about being with your classmates. You talk about the impending 50th anniversary of your high school graduation. That’s coming up in 2011. You talk about your grandchildren, having them or not having them. You talk about your bodily aches and pains. Imagine that? We’re all in our mid-sixties! Did we think when we were in school together that our lives would turn out to be what they turned out to be? No, never, but it was fun anyway.

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