THE RIGHT MELODY

[February 23, 2012 at 1:39pm]

My heart wailed with the father of that recent hazing victim who initially presumed perhaps he’d have a bright life with his chosen fraternity to join in. But the father thought it all wrong ‘coz it turned out what his son had gotten was great sorrow for his entire family and loved ones, as well as his friends.

If you’re a father, you could easily identify the pain and the torture within. Since the beginning of time, it’s a father’s nightmare to bury his children.

However, If you’ve yet to enter in any fraternity since birth I know you couldn’t fully fathom the reasons behind the intention of another individual for such organization. There are a million reasons but one common is to establish another identity especially if one is living a life bereft of challenges as if he exists like a virtual unknown.

I tell ya, I know it. It’s because I knew it.

I was a naïve first-time enrollee in San Ag who just walked, wrote and listened my way to and from school and barely talked inside the campus and the classroom. Not here nor there, as they say, for I found out it ain’t easy indeed to gain stable emotional condition and folks of different strokes gave me more confusion.

And one day, a silent but friendly classmate approached me and broke it to me gently. His convincing power easily attracted my consenting power to try joining in his fraternity. Due to which I met someone with an unforgettable name in my annals about women history.  It was a resounding name because it would always be like a song:  it was simply Melody.

I met unchained Melody along the campus’ avenue where our fraternity and sorority group met frequently. I was still under ‘initiation’ period then when I was asked by one of the “masters” to kiss the cheek of an approaching young lady. I nearly pissed my pants when she passed us by but fear of the “master” prevailed over my fear of such innocent beauty.

What followed was a scene like culled from a rom-com movie: I ran after her till I overtook her in the portion heading to the exit gate. I blocked her path, vowed my head, my both hands on my back waist.

After a couple of “ahems,” I began my soft rendition of the first few lines of the Beatles song: “Oh yeah, I’ll tell you something, I think you’ll understand, When I say that something I want to hold your hand.” And I was more surprised when she sang the chorus in a higher octave, “I wanna hold your hand, I wanna hold your hand.”

We laughed more surprisingly as we finished the song in duet and in more romantic manner thereafter, I plead my cause and my main purpose. She hesitated at first but when I explained to her that on that moment my life depended on her, she begrudgingly obliged and did no more oppose.

And the rest is history, of a soft and gentle kiss on a softer cheek of a gentler lady. Despite those months of searing pain from hematoma of bloated limbs caused by forceful paddling, there is something I am eminently grateful to the prestigious fraternity that yesterday I had chosen.

Tears slowly flowed down from my nose and eyes as I tremblingly sang Alice Cooper’s “I Never Cry.”  Just to keep myself sane, I reminded myself that I was a “Seeker of the Right,” the frat’s battle cry.  Yeah, and merely a couple of years after that incident, I finally saw that proverbial “Road to Damascus.” It was where the real happiness, joy and satisfaction lead to, because it was trodden by the righteous.