Through the years, our class has gained notoriety and
renown, been appreciated or scoffed at, and perhaps all for the right reasons or well maybe otherwise.
But for certain, BABOGA, as we called our class, had once hugged the limelight,
even rising to fame and infamy, having embarked on very ambitious projects,
like a lending instrument called the Baboga Sinking Fund, which like its namesake
sank into oblivion, and a movie sponsorship project (“Close Encounters . . . ) which
encountered nothing but fiasco.
Call it braggadocio or maybe hubris, but our class has always
exhibited fortitude for slugging it out inspite of the epic failures, even
earning the reputation for standing up against bullies and never cowering. What
with Cecil Reluya’s famous, “Hey, Don’t touch me! Baboga Member,” as if his
membership was a talisman that could render him invincible.
Yet, little is known of how BABOGA was conceived and
given birth. As faint as my faltering memory can fathom, here’s the story . . .
Our time in High School in the mid 70’s was during the
time of afro and bell bottom pants that gave way to the new classic baston style
pants. It became our habit to roll the ends of our pants into a constricted knot following the lead of a female visitor who for a brief moment captured Soc’s heart.
In those times, many of us were not privileged to
have the capacity to provide ourselves with the latest trends in fashion, so we
contented ourselves by fashioning our own DIY version of a baston pair of pants.
We were in 2nd high school then when a mischievous
yet intellectually gifted classmate, Glenn, devised an idea to keep up
with the fashion trend (sans the new and pricey pants) which we branded as The “ORIG.” He folded the
bottom of the pants sideways and upwards to appear just like the fashionable
“BASTON STYLE” pant. Seeing how classy it looked like, I followed his style,
and seeing us, many of our classmates did the same.
But Glenn went a little further. He espoused the idea of
having a gang named after the redesigned pants, the BASTON SHAPE, and to which
he added another word BOBITCH to make it BASTON BOBITCH GANG. I never got to
ask Glenn what BOBITCH meant then, and after 4 decades still do not have a clue.
Perhaps taking a cue from Alex, when asked by Sir Doblas during our Social Studies class, to give an example of an
acronym, he answered, UBC for Ubay Baskeball Court. In the same breadth, the BASTON
BOBITCH GANG was abbreviated to BABOGA. And the name still remains to this today
in the memories of its members.
Like everything that grows with age, BABOGA today may
not be as vibrant and radiant as it was before. The new generation of seminarians may
not have heard of it at all, and 8 of its members may have gone back to their
Creator where we all come from . . . but until the last BABOGA member hits the ground and never to rise again, the spirit and memory of BABOGA will continue to live on . . . (by Juntabs)
