for everyone |
You are what you were … in high school - I have a little theory which I would invite the reader to confirm, dispute or challenge. Be careful where you send your kids/grandkids/ nephews/nieces for high school. I believe that what one learns, what he was taught, what one did, what one was like in high school will in a large measure determine what he will turn out to be. You are what you were in high school.
I was a crazy little kid who grew up in Baguio in the 1950s. It was the best and worst of times. Baguio City was just beginning to rise from the ruins wrought by WWII. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, the families who lived and survived through those war years had virtually been through hell and back. Whatever little fortune these families had managed to earn during those years was wiped out in a flash by the outbreak of the war, then by the so-called Japanese Occupation, and then again by the so-called “Liberation” by the American forces, a triple whammy if there ever was one. When the great Gen. Douglas MacArthur returned to the Philippines (as he had grandly promised), after losing miserably in Bataan, he did so with a vengeance – at the expense of the people of the Philippines. American warplanes peppered most of our towns and cities in the country with what was graphically termed “carpet-bombing” operations, i.e., dropping big bombs on every square meter of every populated area and any known or imagined Japanese hideouts all over the country, no matter who got hurt. In the process, the Philippines was literally and truly razed to the ground.
Interestingly enough, that did not seem to stop our parents from producing one kid after another so that by the mid-1950s they had eleven (11) children ranging in age from 1 to 15. Obviously, family-planning was unheard of in those days. There were hardly any houses left standing immediately after the war in Baguio, most having been blown to smithereens or burned to the ground by those massive bombing operations. If you needed a house, you had to build one from scratch using mostly scrap materials since there were as yet hardly any construction materials available at the time.
It is not hard to imagine then that as children we were practically left to fend for ourselves, our parents having had to attend to a little grocery store business they had started, and looking after our baby siblings then aged 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. It’s no wonder then that our sainted mother died at the ripe old age of 48.
My brother John and I were your typical street children. We were professional shoe-shine boys at 10 or 11 years old. We sold newspapers, collected bottles, all kinds of scrap metals and junk materials which we sold to the chinaman. What I did not realize at the time was why we were making quite a bit of money digging cast-iron soil pipes and chiselling out bathroom tiles from bombed houses and buildings. As it turns out, since there were as yet hardly any construction materials available at the time, most people had to resort to re-using or re-cycling these tiles as well as any other usable materials. In one of those forays through bombed buildings, I inadvertently stepped on one end of a burned and twisted GI-sheet. The other end snapped back and nearly sliced off my left leg. To this day, I still bear a deep four-inch scar on my left knee from that accident.
Since we were earning quite a tidy sum of money in those days, John and I inevitably found ourselves in the company of adults easily twice our age, many of them jeep drivers and “comboys” (grown men with two-wheeled homemade wooden pushcarts for ferrying the goods of market-goers), engaging them in heavy gambling, mostly, “cara-y-cruz,” “lucky 9,” dice or blackjack. Every so often we found ourselves running from and being chased by raiding policemen in no-nonsense anti-gambling operations.
Even today I shudder at the thought of such a childhood, neglected street-children, roaming around in a city in ruins and already deep into a gambling streak. There I was a thin, ill-fed and asthmatic 11-year old walking everyday along steep city streets to a makeshift school, coughing and gasping for breath along the way, in cold, dank, humid, foggy and rainy weather, lugging a “surplus” US Army bag of books on my back. My parents had absolutely no idea then as I do now how to medicate or manage an asthmatic condition. All the while though, Mommy who hails from Sta. Rita, Pampanga, seat of traditionally very religious families (she had a sister who was a Carmelite contemplative nun, “Imang Openg,” in Gilmore, QC), would be going to Mass every single day, praying for what neither I nor my father had any idea at all.
One fine summer day, after John and I had just graduated from elementary school (I was maybe 13, and John 12), we were visited by two priests in clean, heavily starched white cassocks, a broad white band around their waist. They were talking to Mommy – about us. They were a Mutt and Jeff tandem. One was a Filipino, Fr. Constante Floresca, SVD, all of 5’2” while the other a movie-star of an American from Texas, USA, Fr. Rockledge, SVD, all of 6’2”. They were vacationing in their SVD Baguio summer home they called “Sunnyside.” Evidently, they had been walking and asking around town who were some of the “bright boys” who had just graduated from elementary school that year. I am not sure now exactly how they heard about yours truly (who had graduated valedictorian of his class). Now, mind you, Baguio as well as the entire Mountain Provinces were supposed to be CICM territory run by the Belgians. Up to that day, we never even heard of the SVDs. To make a long story short, one June evening of that year, I found myself at Christ the King Seminary, QC, homesick as hell, singing “Veni, Sancte Spiritus” (as well as “Veni, Creator Spiritus”) in the chapel with 24 other young boys of my age (John was to follow me later the next year).
I did and finished my high school in the seminary. Our first prefect was a kindly soul, an American named Fr. Mayers. From him I learned to speak good English and drop my heavy Ilocano accent in the nick of time. Of course, we also had a good English lay teacher, an American mestizo, Robert Wilson, who insisted on teaching us typical American English. After about a year, Fr. George Heinemann, a German priest, and all that that signifies, took over as our prefect. If I had my way, I would re-name the place “Fr. Heinemann Seminary.”
He took over and did he ever. He must have liked doing so, he was there even decades after I had left. He was an institution. If you never heard of German discipline, think Fr. Heinemann. Almost overnight, I had forgotten all about my profligate ways as a street child growing up in post-war Baguio. I learned to take a bath regularly (we disliked that stupid habit in cold, perennially waterless Baguio), and to do my own bed. I learned to swim, play basketball, pingpong, pool, shuffleboard, horseshoe, chess. I read all the books in the library. Aside from attending regular high school classes, we had no less than three (3) hours of compulsory and “strict” study period every single day. “Strict” study period meant that you were required to open only your assigned textbook, that is, if you had to make a book report on some fiction you had to find some other time to do the reading.
In-between we had to find time to do our laundry, gardening or yard work (“opus manuale”) give each other a haircut, serve at table, and pray. And did we ever pray. Aside from daily mass in the early morning, we would often have to serve at mass for other visiting priests, say the rosary, visit the chapel about three times a day, and night prayer devotions lasting about 30-45 minutes. As if all this were not enough, before going to bed, you had to kneel beside your bed and say your bedtime prayers. By the way, during our study period, we had a grandfather clock which would toll every fifteen minutes which meant we had to recite the “Quarter-Hour Prayer.” We recited the “Angelus” 3 times a day. We ended our evening prayers with “Salve Regina.” In case you were too lazy to do some individual reading on your own time, somebody was assigned to read a Heinemann-selected material during mealtime.
In brief, whatever I had become in high school was a foretaste of what I am now. If I tend to gravitate around the religious and the transcendental it could only be because of my seminary years. My theory then is: don’t even think of becoming a good golfer, basketball, chess, guitar, tennis or badminton player of consequence unless you tried doing it in high school. Your English or Tagalog accent is irreversibly formed in high school. If you emigrated to America after high school, your accent will still sound funny to the native American speaker. Your lifetime friends are formed in high school. If you had a girl friend in high school, she would have been your first love, and first love, so they say, never dies.
In high school I read “Ivanhoe” by Sir Walter Scott, “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens, I memorized all the famous Shakespeare soliloquys, speeches, and sonnets, read all the “Hardy Boys” and “Lone Ranger” books; as well as “De Bello Gallico” and other commentaries by Julius Caesar in Latin – “Omnis Gallia in tres partes divisa est…” memorized Cicero’s oration “Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra … quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia…” A grouchy old priest, whose name escapes me now (Fr. Schlombs [?]), made us read and re-read Virgil’s “Aeneid” in Latin as well as Homer’s “Odyssey.” Fr. Floresca taught us Latin grammar which still serves me in good stead up to now. I can still recite by heart Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet # 29, “when, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes…” as well as “How do I love thee, let me count the ways …”
I still fondly remember and cherish the memory of my high school teachers, Mr. Cruz and Mr. Sagmit, whereas I hardly recall the names of my professors in college. Speaking of college, what did I learn in college? I learned to chase after girls and to cheat in my Calculus exams. I learned to smoke and drink, sing a few love songs, and drive a car, and that’s about it.
I have often wondered myself why some old XVDs or ex-seminarians from Christ the King still want to keep in touch and visit the old “Kastilyo” after all these years but never even bother to re-visit the university campus where they went for college. Indeed, if you try to examine closely the photos of the “King’s Clarion” Staff of 1963, you will find a Vicente H. Agbayani still looking like himself today, of course before he lost his innocence. I believe Vic and Herman Viloria and his King Clarion staff, what’s left of them, must still be the best of friends.
Lately, I heard that the SVD in the Philippines has decided to stop accepting young kids to enter the seminary for high school. They say it’s too early to separate these kids from their parents. That’s just too bad. I only hope it’s not because they somehow begrudge all the expense and effort of training these high school kids only for them eventually to leave the seminary to pursue a secular career in college. I hope they have not overlooked that in the meantime these young men would irrevocably have become responsible adults and mature Christians thanks in a large measure to their high school training in the seminary. Indeed, they should have realized that you are what you were … in high school. JAMES L.
stephendlr wrote on Jul 14, '08
Hi, James. This is Sonny de los Reyes. I do not know whether these comments will reach you. Some comments I was supposed to have sent you seem to have evaporated into thin air. It is my fault that I lack the IQ to manipulate around the Internet, especially in Multiply.
Anyway, I would like to showcase a point in your article about how important to us is that high school experience in CKS. One of my classmates, from first year high school, who left the seminary in late 1960, died last week. His name is Emnmanuel Cruz. We called him "Mate" because he was from San Mateo, Rizal. Several months before he died, we saw each other in a shopping center. We have not seen each other since 1960. That was 47 years ago. He recognized me immediately and called me "Steve", the name they call me in the seminary. I blurted out his name "Mate". He wanted to talk. So we stood there talking for 30 minutes. I invited him to attend our First Friday Mass. He did attend that meeting, bringing his whole family with him. After the Mass, I asked him to attend our recollections. He said he really would like to but first wanted to know if it would be alright because he has not been that regular in his religious duties. I said of course it would be okay. I invited him to our first Metanoia recollection but he could not come because he had to go to the US on official business for the Tariff Commission. He promised to come for the second one. However, before the second Metanoia recollection, he was brought to the hospital, almost in a coma, for lung cancer. He died last week. During the wake, the son of "Mate" showed me a formal picture of our first year high school class. He found it in the office of his father, inside a drawer where he kept his personal things. The son also told me that his father wanted him to enter the seminary as first year high school student. (Unfortunately, CKS had closed down its high school by then). I did not know that "Mate" treasured his high school experience with us. When he was in the seminary, he seemed not to be interested at all in whatever we were doing, except for basketball. "Mate" wanted to go back to his spiritual roots by attending our recollections. He was prevented from doing so because of his early death. That desire, however, has been answered. What spirituality he experienced in his high school days will now be actual, as he is now face to face with our God. May he rest in peace. |
stephendlr wrote on Jul 15, '08
Hi, Herman.
Yes, Mate comes from the same town as our Tagalog teacher. I think he was even the one who gave him the name "Mate". Was he also the one who gave you the name "Badion"? I am really glad to hear from you. If you remember, I used to go to your house after I left the seminary. That was the time you were preparing to go to Canada. From what I hear, you have done well for yourself. How is your younger brother? I saw the video of your meeting at the Eastern Seaboard. I heard you say that one of the things we should be doing is not only socialization but return to our spirituality. You also mentioned that we should also help the SVD's in return for the good formation they have given us. These things made an impression on me. Carry on! |
percilopez wrote on Aug 23, '08
hi koyang,
come to think of it...the bonds i have made which truly matters to me, were those which were forged when i was in high school ( CKMS ) and what really "cook my noodles" is this feeling of connection i have with older XVDs, as if i was with them during their time in CKMS. is it just me? |
percilopez said
hi koyang,come to think of it...the bonds i have made which truly matters to me, were those which were forged when i was in high school ( CKMS ) and what really "cook my noodles" is this feeling of connection i have with older XVDs, as if i was with them during their time in CKMS. is it just me?
It's a feeling most XVDs share in common, that's why we keep coming back to our regular getogethers for refill. Welcome to the XVD blogworld, Bro. Percy. Keep in touch.
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ReplyDeleteReading your posts and comments made me remember my old CKS days. Indeed, high school is the time that bonding is at its peak. If there is this bonding among high school boys living outside, how much more among us who spend 24 hours inside the seminary... I remember my first year in CKS. My batch was the first to transfer to CKS from the Cebu SVD Seminary, and it was really hard for us in the first few months. Oh, yes, we got bullied by the class ahead of us - Herman Viloria's class. The bullies were Joe Guevara, Rudy Yabes and Quien (I forgot his family name.) But Enzo Leones was our savior: he defended us against them. I met Rudy Yabes again last year, and he was so glad to see me. He invited me to his resort in La Union if ever I go over there. I inherited the editorship of the King's Clarion from Herman Viloria, who gave me many tips on how to do the job. My business Manager was Jovi Sebastian, who is now a retired priest in Pandi, Bulacan. I remember Mr. Santiago Cruz, our Filipino teacher, whose final exam in Fourth Year was to write a tula, dula and salysay in the space of one hour. Luckily Ehoy Villones tipped me that to a good grade, just make sure the first few pages and the last two pages are good. Mr. Cruz won't read what's in between: you can write anything there. And that's exactly what I did and got a 95 in the exam! Good to reminisce on the good old days....