OTWOMD | Bluepanjeet.Net

Life is strange indeed: sometimes you are up and sometimes you are down. Today you are the culprit, the next day you are the victim. You never know how life will utterly shape you, and your destiny for that matter. When I was a kid I was fond of making girls cry. No kidding, I’m very good at it. Though I never really reviled girls nor hurt them literally on purpose, it is just that at the very young age my agenda was to tease girls and tease them more, and tease them forever until they cry and cry, and their lachrymal glands ran dry. You should hear the stories of my family and my relatives about my mischief during childhood. You will not believe how “evil” I was back then. It is as if I was conceived with horns, tails, forked tongue, sheared wings and all. Though most of their stories escape me and I cannot seem to remember it actually occurred, but the point is, I was a problem child back then.

There was this classmate of mine in Kindergarten named “Chlorine” (not her real name and definitely not one of those water purifying elements) who gave me a bad reputation for a start. Every recess we were told by our teachers to put a placemat on our respective tables. One morning we got six new pieces of placemats and of course, kids would do anything just to get their hands on that novelty for curiosity’s sake. And to tell you frankly I was one of them. So in short, the whole class scrambled for the best placemat available. And this poor girl sneaked her way under the table where the placemat were placed. Unknown to us she was trying to smuggle some of it for herself and for her friends underneath the table. And because I was a human wriggler, I accidentally bumped my knees onto her head and her forehead somehow got bumped on the corner of the table. A very, very loud cry was heard inside the classroom. After a few minutes, I saw myself standing at the corner of the room facing the wall as a punishment by my teacher while the rest of my classmates were taking their nap. Clorine told my teacher that I did that to her on purpose wherein I never knew that she was under the table in the first place if not for the very loud cry she made. At the end of the class that day, I left our room with a smirked face, while Clorine had grown red, inflamed horns on her forehead.While growing horns from girls’ forehead was my thing in kindergarten, collecting honey was my new order of business during the first grade. I had a seatmate named Natasha (not her real name and no, she’s not a Russian assassin running a self labeled direct selling shoe business). Natasha was spunky, giggly and outrageously funny as I remembered her, except for a certain day wherein I saw her cry for the first time, as she sank her face onto the armchair from excessive sobbing. The reason? As she was lambasting the other guys in the room by humiliating them in front of the whole class during our activity hours, I saw something golden in her ears. No, it is not her earring and definitely, not an ore of gold. It was a pure golden liquid oozing from the interior of Natasha’s ear. As I saw with my own eyes the luscious flow of liquefied earwax rolling its way outside Natasha’s ear down to her blouse, I can’t help myself laugh so hard that the whole class started noticing the commotion. As I pointed out to the guys the bitter but never sweet honey gushing forth from the source, Natasha suddenly punched me on the face. It was a hard punch but I did not give up that easily. I stood up and threw her my double knuckle punch which broke two of her milk teeth. After that, I saw myself taking the trash out, scrubbing the floor and staying behind after the bell rang just to erase the blackboard of my classroom. I left the school with a chalked filled uniform, while Natasha went home with 2 broken milk teeth and a reputation of being the first girl to ever produce honey from her ears.

During the second grade I stole a kiss from a girl named Ligaya which made her cry all day long. During the third grade I teased to death a classmate named Ruth which possessed the kinkiest of all hair strands ever known to man. I labeled her Medusa and she was so mad at me that she transferred to another school. At fourth grade I put a note on Britney’s back saying “Paborito ko ang kalabasa”(My favorite is Squash). She had a perfect score of zero on all of our quizzes back then. At fifth grade a girl named Purina who insulted me in front of the class, tasted my wrath when I hid her shoe on our classroom cabinet only to find out that my own knapsack was missing. The next day I found it on the trash can on its way to the incinerator, which was recovered by our school S.A. On my sixth grade, I gave Acetone (yeah she’s a girl and it’s not her real name) a Christmas gift that she would never forget. I picked her name in our “kris kringle” hullabaloo and when she opened my gift, her eyes swelled because I bought her a brand new pair of black G-string panties which I dug up from a nearby salvage center (ukay-ukay). After the party, she threw at my face the panties with its tag still on it saying “10.00 pesos”. During my first year, I used to tease girls in my class by pulling their bra-straps and then letting go of it as if they were my slingshot (urggghh that hurts).

On my sophomore year, my best friend (yeah I know, who would believe that I had any girl bestfriend) got mad at me for a reason we do not anymore remember. Let’s just say she challenged me and I accepted the challenge by kissing her on the cheeks. She was humiliated in front of the class as they made a very loud applause and a “hooo-hooo” cheer with matching clapping of hands and an endless encouragement of Go! Go! Go! In order to show grace under pressure, my bestfriend said “eh ano naman ngayon, kala mo may dating saken, wala ano!” (so what? It’s not a big deal). So I kissed her again for the second time on the same cheek. As the cheering and clapping inside the room grew louder, and some of our batch mates were looking through our window, my bestfriend’s face started to blush in humiliation. She never gave up and provoked me the third time around. However, this time, I targeted her lips. I kissed her on the lips to my entire classmate’s surprise. It was the first time I went home with pride and a smile on my face but with a very heavy heart, for one of my few girl best friends was hurt by my arrogance.

And the most unforgettable moment in my cruel history was during my our Philippine Literature class wherein I was the assigned director for our rendition of Francisco Balagtas’ play, “Ibong Adarna” (The Adarna Bird). As we were having our group meeting, a classmate named Melena was missing in action. Until one of the girls in our class tattled about Melena’s whereabouts, who happens to be in the girls comfort room. Melena suffered diarrhea on that day and she was on her way to the comfort room when the liquid excreta burst out from her underwear, crawling its way down to her legs. Her friends immediately rushed to the rescue, bringing perfumes, scents and colognes to cover the stench in the girl’s comfort room. One of the guys heard the conversation outside the comfort room about Melena’s plea to our adviser: “please Mam don’t tell Army that I had this unfortunate accident, he will surely tease me for this”. Her words reached my ear, and I granted her request. From that day up to now I never did tease her about that horrible incident. I even cast her as one of the Major characters of the play. She played the role of Ibong Adarna, a beautiful princess that was cursed to become a singing bird that defecates on her victims and turns them into stone at the touch of her excreta.

All of these girls were at the helm of my mercy, and I made them cry for justice. But fortunately some of them forgave me in the long run and even became my closest friends up to this day.

I matured during my Junior year in High School and mended my ways. I gained the trust of some of the girls and for the first time in my life, I was afraid of teasing them, not because of cowardice, but because of the fear of betraying the trust and friendship, they gave me. I started receiving cute notes and letters from various girl friends (kaibigang babae) which I kept in a shoe box up to this day. I befriended many of them aside from my male gang and somehow my notoriety was replaced by admiration (at least by those who saw my change of heart). Until I had a girl of my own for the first time and treated her like a queen only to make her cry during our break up because of distance issues.

During college I found another girl which really rocked my world and had a long term relationship with her only to make her cry (again) because of my plans of entering the seminary. When I went out of the seminary, I focused myself in my studies instead of having another relationship. I studied hard and made my way through graduation until I passed the board exam and landed in a somewhat semi-lucrative job as a University Professor.

Having a job and earning a living for myself, I finally sensed that I am ready to have a family of my own. I began courting girls again in secrecy from my friends because I never wanted my relationship to be published in tomorrow’s broadsheet if you know what I mean. I started to envy my male friends who have their own families and kids and found myself going to parties with no wife and kids accompanying me. Every time I fell asleep I dream about the girls of my dream which tormented me for months.

Last year, 2006, I was dumped thrice. Yeah I know, many men would not admit their folly, but what the heck, it is the truth anyway. Somehow my experiences last year made me cry so much that I almost thought that I would end up as a spinster forever: alone and with no family of my own. These women gave me a broken heart, enough for a man to lose confidence in himself. Yet from these love life tragedies, I recovered big time.

In my deepest depression last year, the only thing that kept me on my toes was prayer. God alone became my constant companion, and Mary became my comfort during my grief on these women. I turned to her during those hurting moments caused by these women. I asked for understanding so that I may comprehend what is happening to me. Until one morning I woke up and realized the promise I made to God ten years ago of serving him with all my life. Surely you would think that I’m just rationalizing everything so that the blow would not be that hard on my part.

But you see everything that transpired with these women was not in my control nor did I made any wrong move to earn the reputation of being the only man who was dumped three times in a single year. One of these women was already engaged, the other has a boyfriend, and the last one cannot commit because her mother died and her family is counting on her. Right now I’m taking everything slowly but surely. I’m looking for my niche in the greater scheme of things, either in married life or back in the religious life. Who knows? maybe I’m really for the religious life. What do you think?

Isn’t it ironic that I used to make girls cry before, only to realize that the tables have tuned, and now, women are actually making me cry and drool over them? Karma? Sweet Revenge? Destiny? Or Force Majeure? No matter what it is, no matter how one looks at it, it simply goes to show that life is indeed strange: sometimes you’re up, the next time you’re down.

Thus, I therefore conclude: Boys don’t cry, Men do!