New Years bring second chances no more

The earliest New Year I can remember was when I was probably six. With the sweet smell of exploded firecrackers still hanging heavy in the crisp morning air, I and several other children in the neighborhood were being herded by our parents outside to meet a uniformed policeman.

The decade of the 1950s was coming to a close and a new era of revolutionary changes that the world would forever remember as the 1960s was about to take place. But there was no inkling of those changes that long, long ago morning.

All that was palpable was this irrepressible fear. And it kept my bony knees knocking against each other it was a miracle the joints did not pop out of their sockets. It was a time when the mere sight of a policeman scared still uncircumcised boys shitless.

The reason for the policeman's visit was that on the eve of the New Year, some very young boys who still could not handle firecrackers ( omigosh, that was us! ) made "safer" merry with bamboo cannons, called in several dialects by a variety of names like "lantaka" or "pakbong."

Well, exploding bamboo cannons by mere ignition of combustible gases from heated "gaas" inside the cylindrical reeds may produce loud bangs. But they lacked excitement for boys who were beginning to feel the thrill of imaginary wars.

So the neighborhood was divided into opposing armies armed with bamboo cannons that could spew out explosive projectiles made of empty milk cans. On the eve of that New Year, one such can smashed into the forehead of one boy. And the mother went to the police.

We were not jailed, of course. And I could not remember what the heck the policeman wanted to talk to us about. When you are numbed with fright, you hear nothing. So there is nothing to remember.

But I do remember another incident when, again, a policeman was called to intervene in what was getting to be a regular occurrence of childhood mischief. This time, the cause for police intervention was an incident just after a dawn mass two Christmases later.

Bigger boys now, we were allowed the new-found freedom of being allowed out of the house so early in the morning, and pretty soon we were hatching a plan to wreak havoc on churchgoers going home after the Misa de Gallo.

We would tie a string around one end of a cut up bicycle tire, deposit the tire in a canal and lay out the string across the road where, in some bushes, we would wait in ambush. As a woman and her teenaged daughter trudged along in the semi-darkness we suddenly pulled the string.

Out sprung the cut up bicycle tire, wriggling across the road like a snake. The daughter fainted and the mother screamed. The inability of boys to control their laughter was our undoing. It gave us away. The commotion roused the entire neighborhood. And thus were we caught. Again.

Those days are gone. And not just because the boys have grown older. They are gone because the world has changed. There are no more fields and bushes to play and hide in. There are no more real live adventures etched forever in scars and bone fractures.

Yet, in a world that seems tamer and duller by comparison, there is a far greater danger that lurks behind every corner, inside every suspicious package, in the drawing boards of grown men who have not outgrown boyhood games.

Maybe it was better in those days, when fights were settled honorably with fists and nothing more, when to walk away with a bloodied nose was the start of some lasting friendship born of the opportunity afforded by second chances.

In today's world there are no second chances. When a new year swings around, every hope has to be tempered with thoughts of an unforgiving unknown. How I wish I could bang someone again with a lantaka, with me being forgiven and my victim richer with a real story to tell.