Death Becomes Her

This is a true story. It is my most vivid childhood memory, and probably, my most pivotal. If things turned out differently I wouldn’t be here today. Literally.

This story is about my rendezvous with death at the tender age of three. Whenever I share this anecdote with friends, acquaintances, strangers and random passersby I get the most bizarre reactions. Many laugh, others throw up, and one even told me to shut up.

Anyway, I don’t remember if my life flashed before my eyes back then, but if it did, the flashback would have probably consisted of just Mommy, Daddy and my older sister; the Sesame Street cast; our nanny and driver; my teacher and classmates; and some imaginary friends.

But right now, all I remember is that it’s a great story to tell when I want to feel lucky to be alive. Here it goes.

I am in nursery class, wiping my paint soaked hands on my apron. He bell is ringing. It is time to go home.

I saunter off to the waiting shed with the other kids. One by one, I watch them get fetched. Pretty soon, it is just me and another boy left (he shall resurface later in my life as my college drinking buddy). Before I know it, he bids me goodbye as well.

I look around and Teacher is gone. The janitor was vanished as well. Even my imaginary friends are hiding.

I am all alone.

This is most unusual, I tell myself. I wonder what is keeping Mang Arturo, the driver. I wonder if my parents have abandoned me. I wonder if I have any food left in my Candy Candy lunchbox.

I open it. Nothing is left of my egg sandwich. I check my Candy Candy thermos. Not a drop of calamansi juice. I am getting thirstier.

I walk around my tiny school. Can’t I get some decent calamansi juice around here? I think of throwing a tantrum, but what’s the use when there’s nobody to see it?

Aha! I espy something on the blackboard ledge. It’s green. It’s a bottle. It has some clear liquid in it. Pepsi? 7-Up!

How lucky can a little girl get? You pray for calamansi juice, and you get a forbidden softdrink. A genie in a bottle.

I run, grab it and chug it down. Gulp, gulp, gulp. Aaaaaah. Ack.

There is a burning sensation in my throat. I feel a backdraft in my lungs. I am to feel the same thing years later when I get my first shot of tequila.

Ack, ack, ack. I can’t breathe. Wait a minute – why does this 7-Up taste like Ben-Gay? I really prefer Royal Tru Orange! I start to gag.

And just like Batman and his Batmobile, Mang Arturo screeches down the driveway in my dad’s orange Mitsubishi Galant.

I gasp at him, "I want Royal Tru Oraaaaaaaange!!!"

Mang Arturo panics. "Poy-poy (his nickname for me), what happened?"

I find it hard to speak, but I refuse to cry. "Royaaaaal!"

He pulls chewing gum out of his pocket. "Sorry, only Juicy Fruit."

I shake my head. "Royaaaaaal!"

We drive off, full-speed, to my house. In the car, my conversation with Mang Arturo consists of the following:

Poy-poy: Royal!

Arturo: Juicy Fruit!

Poy-poy: Royal!

Arturo: Juicy Fruit!

For a three-year-old the ride feels like an eternity. When we finally get to the house I rush to Mommy and kiss her, relieved to be home.

My mother lets out a spine-tingling shriek, and starts washing my mouth in the sink. This is way before I learn to cuss like a sailor.

The rest is a blur. Daddy is hollering, "Hospital, hospital!" I am back in the orange Galant. My sister tags along. Arturo is driving like Batman. And my mom gets left behind.

I am wheeled into the emergency room. Strange people start sticking tubes inside my mouth; I pass out, the way those crazy American college kids do after they stick beer bongs down their throats.

I wake up the next day in a hospital bed. My sister is playing with our Lego set on my breakfast tray. I reach out for a red plastic brick, but I can’t move my arm.

Ouch. I’m on dextrose.

Dad is pacing the floor, Mom is beside me. "How are you?" she says.

I start to cry. I feel like crap.

On the brink of pneumonia, I spend a week in that room, and I get an endless stream of visitors, balloons, toys. Even the owner of my school shows up – she was probably forestalling a lawsuit. I am bored.

Because this is before Betamax, Game&Watch and text messaging, it is the first and only time I ever longed to be back in school in my entire life.

Years later, the unsolved mysteries of that day were unraveled. The car was late because of an urgent delivery. He driver couldn’t buy me Royal Tru Orange because he spent his last buck on Juicy Fruit Gum. The school had no security guard because it was martial law and there was no such thing as an armed civilian then.

And the 7-Up bottle I drank from was actually filled with kerosene. Used to clean blackboards, the deadly solvent was left on the ledge by a careless janitor / serial killer / crazy classmate.

Yes, I drank kerosene when I was three years old. People tell me that this must be the reason behind my ability to guzzle vast quantities of alcohol (but I still like to drink my vodka with 7-Up), my spontaneous outbursts of creative energy; occasional manifestations of chemical imbalance and my aversion to school.

People also tell me that I was very lucky to have survived that incident – If Mang Arturo had been late a few more minutes or if he had stopped by a sari-sari store to buy me Royal, I would have been on the front page of a newspaper.

Or a blurb in the obituaries. An instant saint. An angel in heaven. A pre-schooler forever.

Instead, I am quite the opposite: a newspaper columnist, a drinker, a sinner, a university teacher and an aging twentysomething. You see? It all makes sense.

In death, we are all saints. In life, we are all survivors.

Moral of the story: what doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger. So never ever leave kerosene in a softdrink bottle when there’s a curious, thirsty pre-schooler walking around – she just might live to tell the tale.

Send e-mail to star_polanox@yahoo.com.