Bompertz Schizotopia

Wowowee! Happy Birthday to Me! I’m nineteen! wooot!

The local flick “Mila” was based on a true story. I agree with the plot. Maricel Soriano, the Diamond Star (because she can be a child, a villain, a clown, and a vampire on screen), portrayed well the problematic image of a public school teacher. Having both parents in the profession, I know very well how is to live such. I know about their endless struggles to increase wages, their torments in traveling distant places to teach the indigenous, their heroic efforts of balancing school and home. Being a public school teacher is more than consuming a box of chalk or preparing a detailed lesson plan.

In “Mila”, Maricel’s hard life was divided into personal and professional. Her problem with her mother and her abusive live-in partners filled her personal life whereas her journey from being a classroom teacher to teaching street children and prostitutes filled her professional life. The movie was an inspirational one and being inspired, I want to share the lives of those public school teachers I know who have similarities with Mila.

Ladies and gentlemen, I hereby present the Mila Award for Best Public School Teacher’s Dramatic Life. No plaques will be given, or trophy, or medallion. This is the start and being the founder, I cannot offer anything but only recognition.

And the nominees are…

Teacher#1 – Mrs. Mombay. Mother of two girls. Wife of an alcoholic security guard.

Mrs. Mombay teaches in a school atop a mountain. Her two daughters are in college so she works hard for their expenses (tuition, boarding house, food…partying and malling?). She was diagnosed having tuberculosis so her fellow teachers avoid her fearing to catch a Mycobacterium. Her students love her because she always gets absent due afternoon fever and paroxysmal cough. Thrice a week or more, she gets beaten by her drunken husband from work. To forget her misery, she attends mah-jong sessions every weekend (and discusses the immorality of gambling to her students the next week).

Teacher#2 – Mrs. Talco. Mother of four naughty boys and (after begging to St. Anthony) a baby girl. Mistress of a man who can’t leave his other family because his real wife is rich.

Mrs. Talco teaches and at the same time sells salamis. She befriends all her fellow teachers such that majority of them will buy her “for sale” goods. When her eldest son caught dengue fever, their hospital bill was towering so she entered another income generating sideline: she became a dealer of Avon and Natasha products. Her greatest wish is for the father of her children to leave his other family.

Teacher#3 – Mrs. Pagdato. Mother of two boys (one is retarded) and a pretty girl. Wife of a landless farmer.

Mrs. Pagdato teaches in a place where the road to is muddy (when rainy) and rocky (when sunny). She and her retarded son are in Oedipus complex relationship. Her normal son quitted school to help his father plow the field. Her only daughter applies for being a Japayuki. One day, she joined a group of teachers to process a loan from a government agency. It was illegal because they got too low salaries courtesy of their previous loans. They changed the values in their payrolls. They got the money but unfortunately, were caught and became subjects for disciplinary actions.

Tecaher#4 – Mrs. Burgos. Mother of an intelligent boy. Wife of a seaman who has never returned.

Mrs. Burgos teaches in a school where the principal is always absent. She was a fresh college graduate when she wed her seaman husband. She got pregnant and had a child. Her husband left her to work in a huge ship abroad. He never returned and is reported to have married another woman. To compensate herself, Mrs. Burgos sees another man and she’s never been happier. She gives chocolates and clothes to her genius son’s teachers in school to make sure he becomes the Valedictorian.

Teacher#5 – Mrs. Evangelista. Mother of a schizophrenic boy and a Caesarean-born girl. Wife of a man who has debts to all merchants in town.

Mrs. Evangelista teaches in a school where her students eat only yellow corn. She adopts three of her poor students every December to spend Christmas at home. She feels lucky having children who are both school achievers. Her husband is also a teacher but if he’s not in school, he goes to their farm and plays with mud. Every Sunday, her whole family hides from those people whom her husband got debts. Her greatest heroic act is not buying her antihyperlipidemics to save for her children’s allowances.

And the winner is…

TEACHER#5!

Why? No more questions…she’s my mother!

Being a wide reader doesn’t only mean digesting encyclopedias, thick novels, and periodicals. To be such, you’ve got to read EVERYTHING. That includes Nutrition Facts at the back of foiled goods, product taglines in gigantic billboards, promises in a politician’s election poster, pen pal invitations in bills, and someone else’s secret diary.  Myself in particular is a wide reader and atop those things I mentioned, my very specialty is no other than the noble art of reading vandalisms.

In the history of mankind, there are two kinds of vandals: the ancient and the contemporary. The previous refers to the original ones, the Vandals (with capital ‘V’) who destroyed great cities such as Rome by burning and hammering their fair architectures. The latter are the artistic ones from the generation X and Y who extend their artistry to drawing and scribbling in school walls and toilets.

Let Herodotus or Thucidides explain how the ancient Vandals ruined great civilizations. As for now, let me drill the contemporary ones.

*****

Vandalisms in schools are done by students with three specific reasons (which I theorized) and they are as follows:

1) TO POUR OUT HATRED. If you’re a guy and some giant of a bully strangled you outside the school’s gate, you’ll know that avenging yourself physically will be over his dead maggoty body. You’ll settle then to the easiest and safest way: secret vengeance. You’ll soon find yourself writing in a wall the words, “Brad is a pathetic gay!”

If you’re a gal and some seductive Eve has stolen your BF, you’ll realize that the only way to blast her is just like that of the bullified guy. One morning, you’ll go to school early and proceed to the Girls’ CR. With your beloved imported lipstick, you’ll write in the mirror the words of your anger: “Jennifer is a BIATCH!”

A teacher failed you in Math, your most despised subject. Like anybody else, your sympathetic nervous system will be activated. How you wish to shoot him with a bazooka. But you get a clever plan of which the effect will be more fatal than any deadly weapon known. One day, the teacher will get a heart attack after seeing these words in the corridor wall, “Mr. Buyco is a moron bald man.” You’ll be in one corner grinning being the culprit.

2) TO POUR OUT LOVE.  Whenever Cupid hits bull’s eye, a person’s brain stimulating chemical called “serotonin” decreases in amount thereby causing a bit of insanity. Therefore, it’s physiologically normal when some neurotic-in-love happens to write in the school walls romantic passages such as, “Pedrito, I love you so much Honeybunch” or “Constancia, you’re the BEST!”

Some desperados will write in the Boys’ CR, “I’m lonely right now. Wanna go out with me? Call me! 433-14344.” A urinator in that CR will see the message and will be calling Mr. Lonely. They’ll plan to meet each other in a restaurant and hopefully, become lovers later on. The both of them then had not only decreased their serotonin level but their testosterones as well and they became homosexuals.

3) TO PASS THE TEST. Your teacher will be giving you a surprise quiz. You were stuck in the telephone gossiping last night and weren’t able to open your notebook (or your photocopies from a classmate since you were lazy to jot down). The teacher gives the class 10 minutes to review. You’ll mutter to yourself, “Yes!” and then you will be using the small quantity of time to write as quick as you can in your arm chair the definitions of terms, the different formulae, and the parts of this and that. The quiz then will be easy as pie for you. Just pray to all the saints the teacher will not visit you and say, “Hey! What are those?”

*****

It got reasons, three enough reasons. Yet, reasonable may it be, all learning institutions got rules. VANDALISM was, is, and will ever be, a CRIME in the eyes of all. Got conscience?

As I mentioned earlier, I practice the noble art of reading vandalisms. “Noble” because only few people do it and “art” because majority of what I see are abstract visuals. I enjoy such weird hobby and my urination in the Boys’ CR will never be complete without laughing at the messages. In one cubicle, I saw a message saying, “YOU are stupid!” Beside it, someone replied, “You TOO are stupid!” A third vandal wrote, “The BOTH of you are stupid!” Then from another, “The THREE of you are stupid!” And so on. Purely nonsense but it made me chuckle. When that was covered with new paint when inspectors visited the school, I felt not urinating.

It’s easy for us guys to respond to the “calling”. Sorry gals, you just can’t stand beside a wall or beneath a tree and sprinkle. I know it’s rude. But hey, I’m speaking of the Philippine setting, our setting, and it’s common. And I know too, if done abroad, we will end up in jail or worse, beheaded in a guillotine.

The phenomenon of (pardon my language) “pissing” everywhere is somehow reasonable, from a certain point of view. Politicians in our country indeed had been corrupt enough; establishments of public urinals became impossible. Lack of discipline may describe it but have we forgotten? We are Pinoys. We are different. We are unique.

Pissing everywhere is a double-sided sword. Its advantage: plants grow greener with minerals courtesy of urea. The disadvantage: ammonia, ammonia, and ammonia. The bad odor will be deadly enough to put to rest an asthmatic.

Perhaps, the most effective way is to have electrified walls. One for sure shall learn a lesson after those excited electrons had traveled through his urine to his ureters. Oh, that will be fatal…and expensive (our country now calls for ENERGY conservation). Presence of guards will be just as costly. Well then, people may settle to the cheapest and the most practical way: PUT WARNING SIGNS. Any suggestion?

Objective: To make a warning sign to ward off stubborn pissers.

Materials: a wide cardboard or plywood, paint (any color expect pink…duh?), paintbrush of course, nails

Procedure: Prepare all materials near you…to save time, energy, and effort. Dip the paintbrush in the paint (again, any color except pink). Write your warning message in the cardboard/plywood. Nail the finished product to a wall or to a nearby tree.

Alternative: If the price of cardboard/plywood has increased due to 10% VAT and you can no longer afford to have them, just write freely the message in the wall using the paintbrush with paint (for the third time, any color except pink). Just think of it as not a form of vandalism but rather a promotion of Clean Air Act.

Voila! You have now a warning sign for stubborn pissers. To test its effectivity, wait for a week or two. My prophecy: You will notice that the dwarf santans below your walls bloom to beauty and the grasses as well. And as you inhale the oxygen, you will realize that it’s no oxygen at all but pure cow gas. Yes, the warning sign you worked hard to make will be water of a duck’s back.

To make your project more effective, I suggest putting more efforts to the “content” of the warning message. Flowery paragraphs may not be in. Just write ego-hitting words such as (pardon again my language), “Piss somewhere else, bastard!” or “If you’ll piss here, your kidneys shall explode.” Those words will be scary enough for sure.

I do not take Bonamine tablets during my travels. What I do to prevent nausea and vomiting is just looking around: to the sceneries, to the people, to the animals, to the billboards…and most important of all, to the warning signs for the call of nature. And it’s funny that in every place I happened to pass by, I saw a lot of variations.

The classic one was, “Bawal umihi dito” (Urinating here is forbidden). Well, I bet a million bucks, those words will be ineffective especially when others happened to spell them, “Bawal omehe deto.” Haha. In one place I saw, “Gago ang umiihi dito” (Stupid are those who urinate here). That may be a harsh one but will be as ineffective. There was one trying to embarrass the pissers, “Hindi ako aso. Hindi ako iihi dito” (I’m not a dog. I’ll not urinate here). Some people will probably prefer being called “dogs” than suffer the bursting of their urinary bladders somewhere. And another one, “Ang umiihi dito ay mamalasin” (Those who urinate here shall suffer terrible fate). Uh-oh? Was the owner of that wall a witch or something? Etc. etc. etc.

I am becoming rude and gross so better stop this article here. I’ll only leave this message: We are Pinoys and we are in the Philippines.