Snippets of Childhood

I often wonder why some childhood memories remain embedded in my brain.  It’s quite a mystery as to what criteria the brain uses in locking away memories that will be forever remembered or letting other short term recollections trickle down to that world of oblivion.  True, there are milestones you just don’t forget: a birthday party, a graduation or any event of great importance.  What I wonder about are precise moments in my childhood which are quite ordinary, even mundane. Yet I still remember them with quite precise detail…

How To Get That Pan De Sal

I think I was in Grade One.  One morning my Lola sent me off to the neighborhood bakery right at the corner of Ligaya St. (where we used to live in Sta. Mesa) and Paltoc St. to buy three pesos worth of pan de sal.  Pan De Sal at that time was ten centavos each.  I remember the smell of fresh pan de sal quite vividly, feeling their warmth as I clutch the brown paper bag close to my chest.  While walking home, I tripped on a rock which almost send my little body falling off the pavement.  As a regained my balance, one piece of pan de sal flew from my arms and landed right smack into a "kanal".  I bent down staring intently at that piece of bread submerged in the dirty water, swimming among the mosquito larvae and dirty algae.  I somehow felt a sense of loss and was ACTUALLY contemplating how to get that piece.  It was seconds before I knew that no one would eat that piece even if I braved the germs to salvage it.  And so I walked home leaving that pan de sal in its watery grave.  

The Colgate Commercial

It was one morning. My twin sister and I sat on our orange upholstered sofa for our dose of Sesame Street.  My Uncle Edwin was cleaning the house, alternately sweeping and polishing the floor with a coconut husk.  A Colgate commercial comes on and I called out to my uncle to hand me the unopened box of Colgate. As the commercial played I held the Colgate up like the model in the ad.  Why did I do it?  Wala lang, feel ko lang.

Ms. Nagtalon’s Brown Floral Dress

On my first day of kindergarten, I thought that my teacher, Ms. Erlinda Nagtalon was the prettiest woman I had ever seen.  She was tall, with a curvy body and hair like Jaclyn Smith during her Charlie’s Angels days.  Back then, I dreamed of growing up to be as pretty as her.  

On the day of our Kindergarten graduation, she wore this long flowing brown dress, printed with flowers.  It was made of, what I later learned, silk and georgette, you know that sheer flowing textile of the 70s and 80s.  She was fully made up with her Jaclyn Smith hair cascading on her shoulders.  At that precise moment I wish I had that hair or was wearing the same dress.  

Instead I was wearing a pink dress that was short and starched, it itched. And my hair was a short, short bob.   

Chicken Dinner on a Garden Set

It was just the usual family dinner But I remember it vividly.  I was in Grade Three, it was a weekend.  I didn’t know what possessed my mom but she decided to have dinner al fresco on the garden set in the driveway.  We had fried chicken and rice.  I can still remember I ate a whole chicken leg and rice and finished them off with Coke. 

It was heaven.   

Siesta or Saturday Fun Machine

Saturday Fun Machine on RPN-9.  That was TV Heaven for a child of the 80s.  Imagine watching cartoons from 9am to 3 pm on a Saturday:  Fraggle Rock, Super Friends (Wonder Twins Power activate!), Yogi’s Space Race, Super Six, The Great Space Coaster, The Roman Holidays and my favorite..The Archies.

Back then I thought The Wonder Twins do more harm than good and I wished that Superman and Wonder Woman would hook up because they looked good together.    Roman Holidays was the Roman Age equivalent of The Flintstones and they had a pet lion named Brutus.  This was all shown in the morning and in the afternoon it would be The Archies (It’s the Bang-Shang Lalapalooza Show, with the incredible gang…The Archies!)  It was at this precise time that my mom would insist that we would have our siesta.  We needed the afternoon nap so that we would grow tall daw.  Whenever this happened, I always refused to sleep but my mom would threaten us with her slipper. I would then pretend to sleep, wait for my mom to doze off and then surreptitiously, I would slowly, carefully, silently creep to our 14-inch Sony Trinitron, turn it on and watch Saturday Fun Machine with the faintest volume.  

I did that almost every Saturday.  I chose Saturday Fun Machine over siesta.  And as a result I grew up to barely reaching five feet.  

Was it worth it? Sacrificing my growth spurt for cartoons?

Hell yeah!