We have changed

More than 42 years have passed since we entered IHMS in March 1976, the time when first met each other. Through all these years, we know that we have changed. We can see the change for ourselves. We grew white hairs or lost lots of them. We have moved on and pursued other dreams--dreams we never even thought of back then. And, for most of us who have left, we have seen our kids grow into adulthood.

There were two type of changes that happened in our life. One was drastic, like the time when we first set foot in IHMS 1976, or when we left IHMS after HS to pursue other interests in 1980, or when we finally moved on after College in 1984. The other change was more subtle, slow, and sometimes discernible only when we look back at our life.

But one of the subtler changes that we may not have notice yet is our attitude and interest. On the surface, we may think that we are the same as we have always been. Yet, our concerns and interests are quite different now than it used to be.

It could be due to the role we took on. We have put behind us our carefree days, and we have taken on a more serious and calculated demeanor, as we are charged with the more serious stuff of rearing and caring and educating carefree children.

Or it could all be just part of growing up. Just like Puff the magic dragon’s friend, we have outgrown our toys and pirate ships. And the once oft-repeated jokes, recollections, and biay-biay that once elicited even more jokes and biay-biay don’t hold much sway anymore as they used to, but on the contrary may even elicit a sense of alienation, a feeling that the joke is trite, repetitive . . .  and that we don’t belong anymore.

And that’s when we realize that we have changed.

This is one reality that we haven’t anticipated, since no one has told us about it. Those who came before us probably just faded away from each other, lost contact, and finally lost memory. Out of sight, out of mind—as the saying goes. And they never bothered to make sense of what happened and how they lost each other along the way.

But there are memory keepers among us who we were so enamored with the years that we spent in IHMS and have refused to relegate those memories to oblivion. Those golden years in IHMS never lost luster for them and they have managed to keep those memories alive, yes even after more than 40 years.

Our batch is growing old. We have in fact lost a few since our last reunion in December 2005--like MarJals who came with his wife, and Alex who raved about Scriptum, urging us to continue writing and was looking forward to the next reunion.

Yes, we have changed; but nonetheless, let us not allow time to cloud our memories of IHMS. Let us continue to remember the stories we used to tell under the mango tree, the talisay tree and the avocado tree near the canteen. We still have a few more chances to rekindle those memories and keep the spirit alive. But only if we want to.

So, mark the year, 2020. It may be our last chance to meet everyone in our batch who for a few years had walked beside us.

(nox arcamo)

Love in the Time of Typewriters

Jones resigned as editor-in-chief of LEGITE in my junior year 1982-83. Finding no one else who loved to write and was willing to slave and toil to create something decently readable, the editorial board and the school administration chose me to take his place.

Nothing really changed, as far as I was concerned. I still had to do the same tasks I had been doing as associate. That means I had to cajole, plea, beg people like McAbs, Ping, Soc, JunTabs, Leonel and others to write just about anything they could think of, then follow them up repeatedly, then edit and type their work on a stencil, then ask the graphic artists to draw anything on the empty spaces, then operate the mimeographing machine. And toil I did for two years.

There were no computers. We hadn’t even seen one, not even in sci-fi movies. But it was during this time when Fr Khing allowed us to use one of the Olivetti typewriters donated by a German foundation. The massive typewriter was placed in the new publications room, beside the library. It was adjacent to the testing room where I found old filled-up psychological testing materials, some from years back, which contained several sentence completion tests. I read answers to the questions and wondered how naive I was in high school, only to realize that actually I probably would have answered those questions in the same way I did. I also read some of our classmates' responses, laughed  at their answers, and realized that I was not alone in my naivety.

During my spare time and after editing the write-ups, I would type them on a folded sheet of legal paper. The fold on the paper would indicate the column width and I would know when to start another line. The number of characters per column and the number of lines used per article should just be enough to fill a space allotted for the article. So I had to do a lot of editing while typing.

Once finished, I would re-type them to a stencil, in 2 columns, leaving some space for Jones, and occasionally Bobong, to draw something pertinent to the article. Errors were corrected using the pink-colored liquid correcting ink. Jones and I would then do the mimeographing. And the finished product would then be distributed.

It was a labor of love, but we all enjoyed doing it.

(nox arcamo)