Wednesday, May 21, 2008 So: May daze By Jocy So Unraveling
THE days of May are dwindling slowly, June nipping determinedly at their heels. Yes boys and girls, summer is nearly over. It might not have felt like the real deal with the cool weather and frequent rains, but even so, our vacation time is definitely ending.
Soon we will have to go back to school. Parents, time to troop to the local bookstores to purchase thousands worth of educational supplies that your kids would mostly just doodle on and make paper planes out of. Perhaps recycling old notebooks is a better option to mindless consumerism in this difficult economic clime?
To all my fellow teachers and to all the students, sorry but our prolonged recess is up! But let's be honest with ourselves, the lack of mental and social stimuli has been causing our brains to mold like old swimming pool tiles.
This was my neurological self-diagnosis when it dawned on me that the highlight of my morning/afternoon entertainment was the kooky people who join Wowowee.
There was a contestant who said her husband worked in "contraction." Another day featured a flamboyantly gay man inaptly named Phillip Salvador. And my favorite: the men who had a profound difficulty with translation.
There were three people battling it out to get to the final jackpot round. All they had to do was answer two simple questions correctly. The squeaky-voiced TV host read this question: "Kung ang mosquito ay lamok, ano naman ang firefly?"
One contestant confidently pounded the button. The hosts called out his name and asked, "Ano ang firefly?" He squinted then yelled out loud and clear -- "BANGAW!"
BOINK! The host screamed with laughter, "Hindi po bangaw ang firefly!" The other contestants now had a chance to steal. The host read the question again in the shrillest possible way, "Kung ang mosquito ay lamok, ano naman ang firefly?"
Another contestant pounded the button with supreme intellectual bravado. The camera zoomed to his excited face as he screamed his answer, "LANGAW!"
It was like watching my high school 90s TV favorite, Battle of the Brainless, only better and unscripted. Of course, I try to balance things out in terms of television viewing and change channels to more smart-sounding CNN, BBC and ANC.
But after watching natural disasters compounded by human errors in Myanmar and China, the Austrian scandal involving a man who raped and held his own daughter hostage for two decades, and other tragedies, I got downright depressed.
It didn't help that the book I was reading was not what the cheerful fantastical page-turner that I expected. I though Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver"s Travels" would be cute. You know, little six-inched Lilliputians gawking at Gulliver's gigantic human frame, places called Brobdingnag and Houyhnhnms, humanoids called Yahoos. Should be a whole roomful of fun, right?
Nope. I read lines that made me more depressed about humans than before. In describing humans to race of intelligent horses, Gulliver said, "vast numbers of our people are compelled to seek their livelihood by begging, robbing, stealing, cheating, pimping, forswearing, flattering, suborning, forging, gaming, lying, fawning, hectoring, voting, scribbling, star-gazing, poisoning, whoring, canting, libeling, free-thinking" (you get the picture) just to feed their own greed and vanity. (266)
Gulliver started off his journey praising humans but ended up concluding that we are nothing but Yahoos who "hated one another more than they did any different species of animals; and the reason usually assigned was the odiousness of their shape, which all could see in the rest, but not in themselves." (273)
In the end, Gulliver preferred the company of horses to human interaction.
I have not given up people for equine companionship, but May did get me a bit depressed about human beings. Not exactly the best mental framework for a teacher about to face rooms full of students.
But, I got out of that funk. Khalil Gibran once said, "When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy." "Is not the lute that soothes your spirit the very wood that was hollowed with knives?" The days of May made me realize how low humans can go, but it also showed me their innate capability to celebrate life and each other. How despite the military junta's stubbornness, people still persist on aiding Myanmar. How despite tumultuous political relations, Taiwan still extends help to China's earthquake victims. How despite rising prices and poverty, people can still laugh and have the time of their lives with as simple a joy as watching an eager contestant call the graceful firefly, a bangaw. (Jocy L. So teaches at Davao Christian High School.)
