TWENTY years ago, I wrote in my opinion column the old caption "President Duterte."
At the beginning of his all-time high popularity, all except one in a Grade 2 class of the Magallanes Elementary School in Davao City, wrote President Duterte in the test question who is the President of the Philippines.
To some of us, it looks innocent more than two decades ago but is now beginning to see fruition in the consistently upward trend for Duterte in the surveys among possible candidates for President next year.
The above story immediately became the subject of my column when my youngest son came home one day giggling with his report that he alone made the answer President Fidel V. Ramos.
Today, in his voting age at 26 years old, John Philip Sabaldan is probably the most vocal among all his former Grade 2 classmates in endorsing Duterte to be the next President of the Philippines.
"She is the first Fil-Am in the US national volleyball team."
John Philip gave us our first grandchild whom I gave the moniker MG Crown. MG for Maxine Grace. She's a girl and we wanted to name her after her dad's favorite NBA basketball star, who goes by the initials MJ; Michael Jordan.
Filipinos love to imagine things out of thin air and when the fresh winds blow. Sometimes out of frustration and helplessness mixed with patriotism.
From my shift as opinion columnist to sports, the marrying type of a graduating college student that John Philip was, called on me to have a one-on-one talk with him. To make the story short, I just found myself writing for my next sports column the title "My sports analyst brings home a volleyball player as a wife."
Now, his wife Jhobee, the darting spiker and middle blocker who is both a registered nurse and a midwife has been receiving invitations and a promised sponsorship from her former American co-workers to migrate to the US.
No grandmother would want to have her first granddaughter far and away at ten thousand miles. I imagine loneliness myself staring at us but out of hope and patriotism, I have to invent a scenario to soften a strong opposition.
The Scenario
Several years from now, I told my wife, we would be standing in front of the American Consul at Roxas Boulevard in Manila.
The US consul would ask us the question why would you two want to go to America? Then I would answer back, we want to visit our granddaughter, who is the first Filipina-American member of the US national volleyball team to the Olympics.
