Fac ut Vivas

1. i always thought that spider-woman wore a blue-greenish costume until my mother bought one for my sister. it was colored red. i found out later that our TV’s picture tube (one of those responsible for the red color) was busted.

2. the four color (cyan-white-magenta-black) prince of persia was weird until we got an AT computer with a 256kb VGA adapter.

3. we had to take care of our double sided double density 360KB and 1.2MB 5.25in diskettes because prolonged exposure under the sun was enough to cause it to expand like a balloon.

4. every sunday, about 9pm or 10, we waited for Million Dollar movies on channel 2 so that we wouldn’t be out of place tomorrow at school when everyone talks about it.

5. annie of shaider and pink 5 of bioman were my crush. it helped — that annie pulled that stunts of hers while wearing a mini-skirt.

6. batman utility belts from jollibee (or was it mcdo?) was the coolest thing since burger and fries.

7. vanilla ice was the coolest rapper. damn! the world was so young!

8. i met alice dixon when she visited our neighbor who happened to be her teacher. i was 9 and already in love.

9. me and my brother fought each other (using cool glowing he-man swordz!) when our mom took us to simbang gabi. while the priest was having his homily we were duking it out a-la he-man and skeletor — we were grunting and sword bashing. for some strange reason, we weren’t trying to hit each other… just trying to hit our swords. cartoons were the same.

10. i never became a member of the sustagen fan club. i never get selected by our teacher when susie and gelo visits our classroom. discrimination.

11. our science teacher made fun of my “medicinal plants” project because i just sliced some vegetables (and other plants) and glued them to a bond paper. my handwriting was so terrible, it was like wingdings fonts. he didn’t think i would become a scientist one day.

12. some kids wanted to be firemen because of the cool matchbox toys that flaunted their gadgets and kickass truck. many years later, i saw real firemen along agham road at quezon city. they didn’t look like the firemen my classmates wanted to be.

13. i did a karate kid crane kick on the oldest kid on the compound when we were pretending to be in some sort of royal rumble karate contest. he was trashing the rest of my friends (including my brothers). out of the blue, my foot struck him hard in the “Das Kapital” — the nads. the devastating kick took him out for a week.

14. every lunch time, before the school bus arrives, we would watch “The Green Slime” on channel 9.

15. we had betaMAX and superman 1-2 on tape.

16. on halloween, we would pack some sort of survival kits and rehearse group movements during the day to minimize the chances of someone disappearing mysteriously while investigating the scariest (kid-level) corners in our neighborhood. after surveying the area, we would gather round and throw in our share of the “grub” into the common pile and exchange ghost stories. the kid who went home (or got sent home by a parent/guardian) first is the sorriest kid because next morning we would call him chicken/coward.

17. we had a stunts club, karate club, comics club, cartoons club, matchbox club, batman club, skateboard club, sports club, gi joe club. all clubs had the same members and the same president.

18. we would play agawan-base with water pistols. our richer friends had automatic battery-operated water guns but our base happens to include a faucet and a hose. whoever has the hose blasts the opposition senseless.

19. one day i thought it snowed. pinatubo had erupted the day before. the fallout reached quezon city and blanketed our neighborhood with inches thick ash that lingered for a few days.

20. i remembered walking with my family somewhere. wearing yellow t-shirts and headbands. I remembered having to make “L” gestures (with my fingers) whenever we met similarly attired people. the day couldn’t have been much cooler because i saw a tank/armored vehicle along the road.

21. i wanted to go with my mom to cubao because of Toppings restaurant and dice mongo in Farmer’s market.

22. i watched moscow circus at araneta coliseum. i was a happy boy because we brought along my dad’s binoculars and the ladies walking on the tightrope wore skimpy bikinis that glittered.

23. our pet parrot susie died. she was shitting blood. me and my siblings mourned her passing. shitting blood!

24. my father brought back from abroad a hardbound comic book entitled “Corto Maltese” it was in french. He would read aloud the french dialogue and translate it into english and filipino.

25. i could never beat my father in chess the way i beat every other kid (in our neighborhood). my hopes were dashed when i found out that he can even beat the computer.

26. i never had a nintendo entertainment system nor a sega genesis but my friends do. sometimes we would go to their house and play until our parents called us for dinner.

27. we like toy soldiers. we would play in the rain while setting up “Saving private ryan”-esque scenarios with plastic soldiers in the mud. gi joes are cool and were sold at 65 pesos that time.we would scramble their body parts when we got bored.

28. spiders fighting each other on a barbecue stick are fascinating. we would also watch ants battling each other.

29. small rectangular shaped cards (teks) were sold in numbers just beyond the school borders. they were tiny  versions of filipino movies rendered as comics. each card is a numbered comic book panel and there are about 64 of them. everyday i would save 1-2 pesos of my allowance just to complete my set. the complete set is worth 5 pesos.