A NURSING STORY

[Tinkered edition from June 11, 2012 at 7:59am]

When I was younger, so much younger than today, okay, I mean when I was sixteen exactly, I dreamed to have a nurse for a wifey. It started when a nurse-wife of a friend requested my Nanay to let her two college junior OJT friends who were nurses-in-the-making for a brief board and lodging in our modest residence then.

As a typical full-blooded Ilonggo, my folks did welcome them wholeheartedly. I think I had already narrated here my then-secret crush story regarding “Aubrey.”

I always have a firm belief since then that the purest among them all is a nursing profession. From the start, my only basis for it is their spotless, Tide/Ariel washed and shining white uniform.

And so far, only once did I remember that somebody tried to successfully stain such belief unwittingly, and that was only when a Lady Gaga look-alike nurse wore conspicuous flaming red undergarments for all the world to see.

Yet still, that single faux pas of one could not completely shatter my conviction for the whole white ladies’ gang. My full respect for their heavenly suit and pursuit avocation will always remain even after a thin swan or a fat lady sang.

It’s simply because most of the people closer to my heart were or still are in that profession which has one if not the most expensive college studies and preparation in the country. The most abused lot as, if not compelled to be called for call centers where they rest only when nature calls, they’re the milking cows of hospitals hiring them with minimal wages and salary.

A nurse is the most caring and daring pro because her calling demands her to be so. I should know, I was hospitalized in 2000 due to what they call then “na-impatso.”

But the most embarrassing moment I had as a patient was when I was admitted a coupla years later due to orchitis, an ailment involving half of two worlds of men near their pride in patrimony. During the initial ocular inspection by an intern physician, an attending lady nurse made a mistake in furthering her scrutiny which caused the ‘patriot missile’ to dutifully rise like in a flag ceremony.

Had it not for some ice cubes to the rescue, a great scandal would have erupted in Don Benito. All because of a nurse and her over-eagerness to help and to perform the sworn task she had led. I’m recalling it as I sing a song of the Bee Gees: “And I fell out of bed, hurting my head from the things that I’d said…”

BACK TO BASIC(?)

(June 11, 2012 at 11:31am)

I am totally supportive of the Dep-Ed’s latest decision to shift medium of instruction in public schools from English to native tongue in all localities. That way, the basics could be understood immediately that someday a phone conversation between a concerned citizen and the PNP won’t be like, “Hello, Police! Police this is?” to which the PNP curtly replies, “Yes, please, police this is!”

For how can a pupil give a correct answer to a question when in the first place he could not understand instructions? Instructions are always officially a part of an examination and we all know that the mother of all stupidity is assumption. That’s why there are many kids who flunk the exams, as they just assume what the question meant and they couldn’t understand.

I am a product of a vernacular instruction as when I was in Grade One Section “Sara,” although we had a textbook in Hiligaynon, we were taught in “pure cow’s milk” Kinaray-a. And I could still recite some unforgettable dialogues from that book’s main characters Lino and Nita, such as, “Ay, pakâ, pakâ, galî, há! há! há! há!”

I could also recall such omnipresent proverb “Sa ikauunlad ng bayan, disiplina ang kailangan” dictated by the late dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos to be posted everywhere in every school particularly in a “paseo.” The country’s sole ailment then was lack of discipline among men, “sosyalismo” and “komunismo,” but I was enlightened after the Pinoys told Marcos pointblank that the real problems actually were “Misis Mo” and “Ikaw mismo.”

I’m happy that we are treading on the straight path of decency and order again. Judging from those indictment left and right of past abusers of power they now know there’s such a thing as crime and punishment.

The public in general would gradually realize that Abe Lincoln was absolutely right in describing democracy as a whole. That real power belongs to the people as it is a “government of the people, by the people, for the people…”

LOVE ACTUALLY, AGAIN

(June 11, 2013 at 4:24pm)

Whether or not you are authentic romantic, love is always an endless topic. A topic of which man has two choices: love it or hate it. The way a lover’s explanation varies.

In this lovely world love is truly more complex than anything. The reason why The Four Aces sang it in closed eyes that it’s a many-splendored thing. Take it from me, it’s the most enduring. One may forget it for a while but it’ll always keep on returning.

Like the fleeting memories of love featuring old friends in school in the photo below, not above. I rolled down in laughter yesterday upon seeing it for the first time when from cyberspace I had it grabbed.

I’m still amused with our faces and poses there because while I think majority in us were still asking then, “What is love.”  Little did I know then that one of our classmates present there had a child along she tagged, a fruit of her labor, wonderfully made in love.

One of my most feared in life is when the time comes the past would catch up on me if not it did already. Truly, we can never undo things we did then thoughtlessly unlike what we normally do with mistakes with our e-gadgets today.

It’s pretty scary even to imagine when someday, heaven permits, in your high school seventieth anniversary, you found yourself one of only two present but you’re so aghast you could not found her face anywhere in memory.

And you would play along for a while; engage her in a light talk, hoping her name would spark eventually. However, no matter how hard you tried, nothing in your brain about her in there making you so mad inside.

Finally, exasperated as you face the truth, and since you both knew you’re octogenarians you admit to her your memory loss. The scariest part there is, when you ask her name in your most gentlemanly gesture, she would tell you straight from the heart, her soul’s so sure, that she was once your girlfriend and you never had any closure.

Ahh, the childhood’s foolishness, the sins of the young and promiscuity of the youth. Just when you think you had them all wrapped up, they haunt you back, you're "lucky" if you're just shot in the foot.

It’s because you thought what you have had spread abroad in the olden times through good or bad were already the so called true love, and one rising above. Forgetting that despite those things you were and are still alive because of Someone Who is higher than the highest, greater than the great, called the Champion of Love.

MULTI-TASKING

(June 11, 2014)

Being a natural one-dimensional being, I salute those persons who could perform multi-tasking. Like Kawhi Leonard who aside from defending Lebron James, he’s also into high scoring. And that makes my human nature tactless enough to ask myself sometimes: Why do those people seem to be too good at doing everything at the same time?

This question popped up in mind too as I take a close look at the photo in the news, featuring the big three senators genuinely beaming wide despite being formally accused. Accused of the crime of plunder, the worst indictment for a robber.

Well, if you’re insistent to know my beef, I’d say, let the courts decide for their case. When you profess to be believer of justice, let the innocent be released, the guilty punished.

Some people are apparently more “lucky” than the others indeed, just like those mentioned elected public officials in the Senate. They are a breed of famous and rich, having alabaster skin and pretty faces, unlike me who would only be described as “tall”(?), dark, and… well, forget it.

They are a race like, wherever they go, whatever they do, they are having their cake and eat it too. They are a rare type of regardless of what’s happening around them, it looks like the word wrong or mistake, or both, to them are clearly alien.

It’s because they have the capability and talent to do everything at the same time an ordinary mortal cannot do. Like if in the past they could be KBL, LDP and Lakas, PMP or PDP-Laban, who knows, they could be LP stalwarts too.

Just perfectly like Congressman Manny Pacquiao, to me the man who can do anything, any way, anyhow. Manny was formally appointed as head coach recently of a newly admitted expansion team in the PBA. And being a winner in any which field he’d venture into, surely, he can do magic with his wand like a tooth fairy.

I can’t wait to hear how will Coach Pacquiao give instructions and devise plays also for his players when the game is on the line and the time remaining is almost zero. Will he be like the great Robert Jaworski, who, when with his chips a play he would draw, he’d glare to his five men first before touching each chip, saying, “This is you… this is you”?

It’s a must for a man to push himself to full extent of his capacity, yet he must remember that everything that excesses may end up a liability.

Too much pressure is given or like a twin to multi-tasking, hence, Manny the congressman and Pacman the boxer might cloud the judgment of Pacquiao the coach during actual basketball game. Without realizing it, he might come up with these instructions he’d presume as defensive gem, “Use head fake as if it’s the N.G.O. we’re faking, and hit ‘em with a vicious hook or jab-straight in the abdomen.”

Multi-tasking measures our capacity but expect no perfection as we are merely a human being. Only Jesus, a Supreme Being, could perfectly do all of them for all things were created by and for Him (Col. 1:16; John 1:3).

As my fave song puts it, “He heals the broken-hearted, He set the captives free; He made the lame to walk again and caused the blind to see” (Matt. 11:5)

THE JUDGE

(June 11, 2016 at 1:48pm)

This old and timeworn story was told by a Catholic friend when I was still a bubbling, cute (?) teenager. Catholics believe that when a person dies he’s immediately judged by someone named ‘St. Peter.’ And somewhere in the gates of heaven, this he said then was what did happen:

‘St. Peter’ was interviewing the first person in line: “You, what have you done when you were alive?” The man replied, “I was the boss of illegal loggers in the forest. Prosecutors would drop the case against my men at my behest.”

“Quick! Go to that room! The sizzling one that’s colored green. Its heat is prepared for those who against nature have sinned!”

‘St. Peter’ queried the second soul who was unabashedly crying, “Hey, what did you do for a living?” In between sobs, answered the assassin, “Literally and figuratively, I made a killing in killing.”

‘St. Peter’ judged him, “Haste! Go to that room, the smoking one that’s colored red. He paused and continued, “From everlasting to everlasting, the boiling blood will be your bed!”

The third one, an ashamed stunning woman, was vehemently asked too. Shaking in fear, she would respond, “I was a prostitute all my life through.”

And ‘St. Peter’s’ voice did boom: “Hurry up! Go to my room!”

We, as ordinary human beings, intentionally or not, just simply do like that. When we hear and see what we perceived as evil, we would easily judge. We’re quick to condemn other people for the wrong they’ve done. But we’re too slow to know the mistakes we did with our own hand.

I remember what said to us by Jesus: “Judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matt. 7:1). “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote of thy brother’s eye” (v.5).

And Paul said we are inexcusable when we pass judgment on someone else, it’s like we condemn ourselves too, for we do the same things either (Romans 2:1). As what was written by James in his rejoinder: “There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy: who are thou that judgest another?” (James 4:12).

Besides, we must all surely appear before the judgment seat of Jesus. We will receive things according to what we did, be they good or bad (2Cor. 5:10).

REAL LIFE DRAMA

(June 9, 2012 at 1:25pm)

If your life lacks drama and you’re still bored to death and always at a loss on what to do with that life, spend time in the Emergency Room of a hospital, particularly a government hospital, and there you’ll find real life drama of various kind about suffering and strife.

It’s a perfect stage of all reality shows simultaneously showing in all parts of the Earth, where stories of pain and anguish are sure to find and peace and quiet are expected to be dearth.

If you’re seriously contemplating about life and death while witnessing around therein all sorts of cries and wailing, you’d realize after all that you’d nothing to be proud of in this life as you’re only a human being. That you’re just a heartbeat away from death, whether you’re a weak specie or a robust athlete.

When the King of kings and Lord of lords would take back the life from Him you had borrowed, it doesn’t matter whether your current health condition’s in the pale blue, yellowish or pink code.

If the weeping and gnashing of teeth of adult patients receiving initial treatment therein could not touch or move a hardened heart of a criminal equally hardened, try hearing the howls of innocent infants and toddlers receiving their first ever I.V. and you’ll wonder why Satan’s not moved by those cries as you continue to listen.

I have this opinion that the finest hour in a parent’s life is when you sit on bed at night staying awake as you watch your sleeping child, your eyes feasting on his innocent face. No other joy could be culled from any given time of silence in your parenting life that would match such moment so precious and priceless.

Thank God for His immortal words of comfort which still teach us to be still, in the midst of trouble, and to know that He is God (Psalm 46:10) who would truly care and feel. Take it also from the Psalmist who was comforted by the rod and staff of the Good Shepherd even when he walked through the valley of the shadow of death and feared no evil (Psalm 23).

The faith which gives us that cup that runneth over is the same faith that could guarantee us to dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

THE CLAY

(June 9, 2014)

Like when love is like a roller-coaster, my heart this morning went up and down in Miami and television. And when the smoke was cleared, I felt like among the revelers swimming in South Beach in wild abandon.  But before that, I was greatly entertained too when TV enslaved me this weekend. For two successive days, things turned out as what I wished they should be again.

Two persons, both of whom I root for since the reign of ex-President Gloria, were the cause of my silent euphoria: One is the footloose, claymaster Rafael Nadal a.k.a. Rafa, and the other is the shrieking Maria Sharapova.

I really can’t understand why although I have yet to hold tennis racket since birth in actual game or practice, I have followed the game and a big fan of it since the days of Borg and Connors and Martina, the Navratilova not Hingis.

And the one player that electrified my interest was the young John McEnroe, the mercurial American whose temper was hotter than the sun if not towering inferno. Those were the days when computers and cameras had no HD’s yet in their names, thus when umpires would commit mistakes expect most players to call them names.

And McEnroe was not just calling names, or cursing or cussing, my friend. I suspect he tops the record of having so many rackets to destroy or bend. Well, I can understand his antics being a passionate player, most likely than not that is a among the characteristics of a winner.

But I’m glad an ungentleman-like attitude is now a big no-no in a grandslam and so they penalize heavily those who grumble and whine. They should, as tennis is supposed to be a royal sport, a “sosi” entertainment for families of a king and queen, and, okay, a king’s concubine.

Of the four Grand Slam, I like to watch best is the Roland Garros or the French Open, which court thereof is made of clay. This is a bizarre surface since a lot of champions in the three other slams failed to conquer this in their big dismay.

The reason why I am in awe of Rafa when it comes to this surface since it’s clearly his forte. Judging from his 66-1 win-loss record as of today, you’d conclude in Roland Garros he’s born to play.

Look at the way he demolished again Novak Djokovic, also pretender to greatness, in the final match. Let me say, he did not just beat luckily the Serbian champ, he had him outwitted and outclassed.

Sometimes I ask the skies, the rainbow’s stripes and the star, why did tennis evade me like a plague throughout my existence so far? When at one time, so that my too much passion for it would be relieved, I nearly changed the meaning of RGF, my name’s acronym, into Roland Garros Facurib?

But there must be a reason, a very compelling reason, why I was not given the chance to play the sport much less in a clay court. Perhaps, that’s because I’ve yet to hurdle and conquer my life’s other surface like a version of tennis’ grasscourt and hardcourt.

Or maybe I’m in the middle of the Roland Garros-like game right now, unwittingly. Where the first order of battle is to succeed in conquering the first hard opponent, convincingly:

My own self. Made of clay. (Job 33:6; Isa. 64:8)

GETTING EVEN

[June 9, 2015]

My remote seldom switches to CNN, and if it does it’s only in passing. I watch it only when it presents something I truly find interesting. Just exactly like what that fabled cable news network featured last Sunday, May 07, in its "GPS" segment, when it featured about the emerging warriors, no, not the Golden State’s, but the ones belonging to ISIS movement.

The show merited my full attention when their resource person, a colored but well-respected woman, testified about the savagery those ISIS men did and do to all innocent civilians. But when she spoke about every pretty young female of every village they would overrun, I stopped watching it as her story sent shivers down my spine, giving me some goosebumps.

You try to have a very young and lovely princess for a daughter with you to whom you spend daily your most precious moments, especially now that she works with you too when you report for duty at least five days a week, then you'll know what I mean.

I could easily imagine through her detailed account in spontaneous narration of every scene when ISIS would hold public auction of those female captives right up the stage, chained and naked. If you’d only let your emotion and carnal self grip completely your mind and spirit, you’d never think twice about training in the Middle East for bomb-making and suicide-bombing: against the ISIS.

It makes you wonder, if this sort of human creatures so vocal and passionate about their so-called faith, the reason their acolytes and fanatics do those things as they would allege, then it's easy to assume what attributes their deity does really possess, for one interprets that whoever that god is, then rape, murder and mayhem are what he’d encourage.

And the rest of the world will conclude that such kind of deity is totally unlike the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob. He’s the same God of every believer today and tomorrow, dwelling in the hearts of men and not in any building, tent or cove.

He Who is "gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy" (Ps.103:8). The Beginning and the End Who inhabits eternity (Rev.22:13; Isa.57:15).

His main character, uniquely separating Him from any other god, is that He is the Lord of many chances for our God is love (I Jn. 4:8). If other gods teach their loyal minions and followers that killing their enemy gives them satisfaction and glory, our God doesn’t, as He teaches us instead to be humble, to be sensitive for everybody and to even love our enemy (Jn. 5:44).

As Jesus Christ Himself reminded the people in His preaching that even the publicans were also good to those who were good to them (Jn 5:46). That is why loving an enemy is the core of Christian teaching for only through this way that we can show our difference.

Hence, if someone wronged you, deliberately broke your heart and caused you terrible hurt and unbearable pain, don't take revenge, "Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord," (Rom.12:19) but rather take it to God in prayer to pray for him.