IGNORING BEING IGNORED

One night, inside a near-closing Iloilo leading supermarket branch, I was falling in line like a sheep meek and dumb.  I guessed the scene was similar to Jews queuing for a crumb, resigned to their fate, inside a Nazi concentration camp.  I was paying for some selected grocery items corresponding to my tight budget for the next day.  I was green with envy of many fellow customers who were pushing three big carts simultaneously.

There goes your bad side again, just count your blessings only, as I murmured and rebuked my own self immediately.  I almost forgot to appreciate that although so few were those groceries, they’d still make one family live another day.  I knew after we ate them satisfyingly by tomorrow, I would gladly rephrase Churchill anew:  never again in the field of the human hunger was so much owed by so many to so few.

Later, I was waiting in a jeepney stop when I saw a female customer with a mischievous smile being followed by a young grocery helper carrying her five big plastic bags full of merchandise.  The lad loaded all the bags inside her still plate-less sports utility vehicle in shining white, no doubt the woman was unimaginably rich because of the way she'd stare with condescending eyes.

And then I recalled those eyes, those deep-set now-hazel eyes, and her other familiar features.  I could not be mistaken, she had been someone I knew to be so nice, in person and in pictures.  Before she embarked in her vehicle, our stares met, and I was sure she was stunned, and I smiled, but I was snubbed.  Ahh, she’s rich now, so, breeding counts for nothing anymore as she was no longer the sweet biddable friend I loved.

Yeah, then we were nice friends, good friends, no, better friends, although there was no spark in between.  We used to borrow cash and kind from each other when the going got tough and tougher times got going.  And I told myself further, maybe true was that old saying not to borrow money from your friend, lest, you’d lose that money and him.  Well, she was my evidence, and considering what I did for her, I was tempted to say I don’t have many regrets but she’s now one of them.

Actually, what deeply hurt me in that instance were not those unpaid lent cash in the past, if any:  it was the way she deliberately ignored my greeting stares as if I was an outcast in our society. 

What she did was totally not unlike what a Supreme Court loan association did to me after I desperately filed therein last July 2016 my loan application jointly with my four other colleagues’.  Theirs were unceremoniously OK’d but mine’s still in limbo to date, yet not an angry word neither a text saying it was denied nor damned was sent by such landline-less lending office.

Today, I’m still waiting, no, not anymore for my loan’s grant and release, but for their courtesy of a reply and for a little amount of respect.  What is mind-boggling is seeing some institutions engaging in the business of lending, yet their officers, personnel, and staff would act as if charging interest is a noble calling.

They should not have ignored me by sending just a note telling I was snubbed that I’d no longer hope.  They help me, yes, yet I help them more, in truth, for in my every need, their business stays afloat.