I arrived at Miriam College in the middle of a tremendous downpour at around 4:30 pm last Saturday afternoon. There at what we used to call the lanai I signed in, picked up my badge (it kept falling off my blouse so I stopped wearing it soon after) and the black net bag full of goodies, voted haphazardly for the new board of trustees, and went inside where quickly enough I ran into my classmates.
We went up those familiar broad steps together. How many years ago did we run up and down those stairs? Did they remember the feel of our feet on them? We were back to celebrate the 50th anniversary of our high school graduation. We tried to enter the auditorium through the left door, but one of the usherettes said, “Please go through the other door.” Oooops, Nena Zulueta Chauser and I said, as we noticed tall and beautiful Mia Florencio talking to everyone who entered through the correct door with a TV camera behind her. None of us wanted to get on TV. So we tiptoed in unnoticed, crossed over through upturned wooden auditorium seats to reach the other side where we were supposed to sit.
“They still have wooden chairs,” Nena observed. She is a resident of San Francisco who has not been home for 35 years. Me? I hadn’t been back to this auditorium in 50 years. It was much the same except it was airconditioned now.
“Remember exams?” I asked and Nena laughed. “We were seated here and the nuns would walk behind us to see who was wearing a slip and who was wearing only a bra. All my uniform blouses were lined at the back with cloth trimmed with lace, but I only wore a bra.” We both laughed.
So we sat, and sat, and sat some more, but the show still would not start. It was supposed to start at five but began at almost six after our class began to clap impatiently, followed by other classes. Nena was seated on my left, Eliz on my right. Both of them are USA residents, extremely restless about time, efficiency and entertainment quality, just like me. First the president, Rosario Oreta Lapus, spoke for what seemed like a long time. We exchanged looks. Boring! Then they gave five awards, each awardee introduced with a kilometric speech. We looked at each other again. Boring! Then there was a car raffle — a Mercedes Benz that they bought and raffled off as a fundraiser for their endowment fund. The lady who handled the raffle announced she had 20 minutes.
“Twenty minutes!” you heard the audience gasp.
“This is my first and last time here,” I said. “I am never coming back.”
Then, as if to appease the dissatisfaction brewing in my class, one of my classmates won the Mercedes-Benz. She came in, bought the last ticket, and won the car. That alleviated our torture that evening.
Finally, I think it was after seven, the entertainment began. Our class, High School 61, had the simplest presentation. Our old pictures were put on video. I wrote the text and Eddie Gatchalian, whose wife, Bing, was one of our classmates, did the lovely music track. I thought it was very elegant and simple, like most of us in class.
The program was good enough. I liked the dance of High School ’71 best. It had the girls who rolled up their skirts into mini-skirts. It had boys from Ateneo and La Salle and it had four nuns who also danced and sang raunchily. That was the best number for me because it had a strong irreverent sense of humor. My advice is next year print everything you need to report and put it in the goody bag. Do the awards with only three sentences for each awardee, but write them up in the magazine. Then begin the program with the song and dance numbers of the jubilarians and ruby and whatever graduates, then give everyone a place to have a pleasant dinner with their old school chums.
In the end, I enjoyed having lunch with my old friends most. I discovered how wonderful high school friendships are. “Friendship is warm and fuzzy,” Nena said, and I agreed from the bottom of my heart. It is always so warm and fuzzy and it also always feels so good.
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“Nannie,” my 21-year-old grandson Nicc said over lunch, “I want you to teach me how to write.” This request from my grandson has nudged me into mounting another writing class this time for men only. Every class I have given has had men in the minority and I got the impression that they were overwhelmed by the women’s response to the writing class. So I have decided this class is for men only from age 21-100. It will cost P8,000 for eight classes but you must pay me in full up front because I will only have eight to 10 students and I want to make sure that everybody will come. Please text me if you want to enroll. The class will begin on Monday afternoon, Oct. 3 at 4 p.m. I will tell you where once I accept you. The only qualification you need is you want to learn. You don’t need to know how to write already, you just want to learn.
Another thing. I have a blog now. Please visit at tweetumsgonzalez@blogspot.com. Now I know I will get rude people there, but let them. We probably could use some rude interest in that blog that I haven’t quite learned how to manage.
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