Friendships Lost and Found (edited)
“ANG TABA MO!” was what Melita said when she saw my Facebook profile picture after I blocked her for about 5 years. But let’s admit that it is the typical first remark a Pinoy friend you haven’t seen for a long time would tell you in your face — ANG TABA MO! You’re fat! It was harsh and cruel, I thought, and I was tempted to block Melita from my life forever. I was shocked and offended, I must admit, but after I recovered from the initial shock, it reminded me that tackless remarks like this can either reconnect us with old friends or create distance between us. She did not mean to offend me, so I chose to reconnect.
Melita was my classmate in High School — one of the classmates I tried to keep in touch with after graduation. She went to Manila and attended college, taking up a BS in Elementary Education. I went to a college in my province, taking up the same course, not because I wanted to be a teacher, but because two of my cousins were teachers. My aunt, financing my college education, decided I would be a teacher, too. I would be Titser Badik — Badik being my nickname in elementary school. Gross!
Awful! I tried it for one agonizing year, learning how to make lesson plans and struggling to recognize Doremi from Fasolatido with the help of a pitch pipe in my Music class. After one semester, my Music teacher was fed up with me and gave me a passing grade so he wouldn’t have to see me again in his Class in the following school term. He didn’t have to because I enrolled for a BA course the year after, and then I moved to another college in Manila to study Journalism. I hoped Melita and I would see each other quite often, but fate would not have it our way. Her sister, also her guardian, decided to send her to my college in the province, where she would be a campus beauty queen. I, a lost boy in the city, had difficulty adjusting to city life and a new school environment. Still, when I did, I soon forgot all about Melita. The sights and sounds of Manila, and the company of newfound friends, made it easy for me to ignore.
Years later, we bumped into each other again — near where I used to work. I was sharing a room with an office mate in Bo. Kapitolyo in Pasig; she was staying with her sister in an apartment a couple of blocks from ours. It was easy for us to pick up where we left off, and then we were best friends again. She was prettier than ever. I was so proud of her that I would invite her to my workplace, which was just a walking distance to where they lived, for casual lunch, Christmas parties, etc. She met one of my officemates in one of those invites, who eventually became her husband. It was no secret that I was disappointed with her choice, but she had made up her mind. I was at her wedding, but I cannot remember when we drifted apart. I guess it happened after she got married. I felt like a jilted lover, so hurt that we lost touch for the second time. Or rather, I kept a distance from her and her husband until I moved to Europe, where I learned how easy it was to forget without even trying.
Just to be reminded once again. Some forty years later, this time at home in the Philippines, when we were both in our 60s, not quite wrinkled and faded but getting there. A long way to go still, I tried to convince myself, albeit half-heartedly.
Melita looked so young, beautiful, and widowed! Her husband died two years earlier when we met, leaving her with three grown-up boys — or four?. Once a devout Catholic wearing a scapular in HS, she is now a Born-Again Christian. Not an issue with me. As long as we respect each other’s faith, unlike my former laundrywoman who, on the first day she came to my place to iron my clothes, saw the image of Santo Niño in my room and began talking about how wrong it was to worship and praise false gods made of stone. Would it be all right if they were made of gold? Tempting to engage her in an argument. I quickly realized that interacting with this person would drain me, so I just rolled my eyes and told her to leave the little boy in peace and do what I was supposed to pay her for — ironing clothes. The little boy was there to watch your every move, I said in jest. Talk of overnight saints or Mary Magdalene! I take that back; I didn’t mean to insult Mary Magdalene.
I don’t remember when Melita converted to another faith, or why. It must have something to do with the traumatic experiences she may have had in our Catholic school run by strict and unreasonable nuns and biased teachers who would always pick on her and her two bosom friends/classmates. They were all from this once-sleepy village in our town. It is still a village, but thanks to one resort that offers recreational activities, it is now bustling with energy.
Melita and her two friends were inseparable: they would come to school together, eat lunch, and get home together. They even sat together at the back of the Class. They were known as Calueng and Company, a name that would elicit laughter from us, their classmates, whenever our History teacher called on them in a rather condescending manner. “Calueng and Company! “she would yell, and the three of them would rise from their chairs timidly, red-faced and frowning, while we, their classmates, doubled up. Calueng was the family name of one of Melita’s company members who appeared to be their mother goose. The moniker stuck the day one prejudiced teacher picked on them. She was an excellent teacher, a good one, but it was apparent that she played favorites. A friend who attended the same school had no pleasant words for her until this teacher died. A tear fell when she heard the news, not out of sadness but because she felt nothing — a line she may have picked up from some Broadway musical.
I remember one occasion when my classmates Joseph, Mauro, and I chatted with Calueng and Company while waiting for our religion class to begin. The girls were giggling, amused by what we may have been telling them, when our religion teacher, a nun, arrived and saw us. The girls may have been delighted by our chat, but the nun was not. She came to us, face stern, and demanded that the three girls kneel facing the wall. Joseph, Mauro, and I were spared. I don’t remember how long they were on their knees, but I remember Melita’s tears running down her cheeks. We needed to figure out why they got punished. Maybe because they were not supposed to chat with boys? There was a rumor circulating on campus that Joseph — our Class gigolo — and this nun were lovers, a rumor that Joseph neither admitted nor denied. The poor nun had no clue that “it was you they’re talking about ” — a line from a TV deodorant commercial of my generation, but knew perhaps that Melita was one girl who fancied Joseph. Punishing the girls might have been her way of telling Melita to mind her manners. Not that she was jealous, but because we were in a Catholic school where good-catholic school girls were supposed to avoid temptations like boys. Oh, sure!
The nun did not know that Catholic schoolgirls like Melita do not remain Catholics all their lives. We cannot primarily blame them, Melita. It must have been easy for her to change her religious beliefs, what with the treatment she got from school, although her being born again to Christianity came decades after we sang Auld Lang Syne to conclude the four years we spent together in high school.
Smooth sailing has been between Melita and me as friends despite our different religious inclinations until she shared this link on Facebook, calling homosexuality an abomination or something like that. I don’t remember the exact words, but the message made me angry at Melita, and I told her so. She said the link came from an in-law, and she was sharing it as requested, nothing personal, no offense meant to me or anyone with a different sexual orientation. Hello? I was furious and immediately blocked her from my FB friends list, but not before letting her know how much she hurt me and made me sad. I was enraged, bitter, and felt so betrayed. I did not want to hear from her ever again! Déjà vu? Oh, sure! It was like reliving the time I swore to myself not to dance to Donna Summer, or the time I smashed my record of Anita Bryant’s “Paper Roses” into pieces. Whoa!
I missed Melita. In all these years, we have not heard from each other. How many years has it been since three, four? She has an “adopted” son — her words — with whom I was friends on Facebook. He would now and then feed me info about my best friend-turned-best enemy and ask me to find it in my heart to forgive and forget. I wanted to say that I have, a long time ago, the same day; after that stream of emotion has dissipated. I was dealing with pride here and there then, so I remained mum about how I truly felt — that I yearned for our friendship that was rudely interrupted by an offensive link shared on FB by some insensitive religious watchdog. And shared further by other blind followers without pausing to evaluate the repercussions it could create!
Fate is kind, though. Melita and I have been friends again, and we’ve been chatting on social media like the long-lost friends we were. She sent me a friend request on FB, and without batting an eyelash, I pressed Accept. She told me I had previously ignored her two attempts at making friends with me again, on FB at least. Oh, you did? I asked. Forget it, she said. Too little time left to dwell on an issue that has already caused much emotional pain to us. We are now in our twilight years — her exact words. She was trying to say, “Let’s not waste the little time we still have on inconsequential subjects.” Banter is OK, though. We both laughed and talked about school days when she was still a part of “Calueng and Company!” and misty as we remember schoolmates who are now gone.
Some memories are best forgotten, but not those of friendships shared with our school classmates like Melita. We miss those who are gone forever and wish to see those still around.
Dedicated to the memory of our classmates Leticia Gamboa, Pacita Garcia, Reynaldo Dela Cruz, Mauro Avendaño, Crispin Anore, Ricardo Pabustan, Helen Alvaro, Lourdes Soriaga, Jaime Alejandria, Javier Marmol, Raul del Rosario, Medy Victoria, Teresita Sayo, Percival Corcino, Maximo Cruz, and Zoilo Perlas. Zoilo died during the pandemic. Because of the Lockdown, no one from our Batch could attend his funeral, and a couple of others whose names I cannot recall. After all, that was the Class of ’65.