about a boy

earlier, in accordance with my very busy week, i headed off to manila as soon as i woke up to get some errands. i jumped off the train, grab some of my newest favorites, hongkong noodles and fruit shake for breakfast and took a jeepney ride. when i reached my destination, the place was busy as usual. but compare to its regular days, it was far calmer than what i have expected. you could notice how busy the place was. the noise, the way people walk (faster than a marathon athlete going to makati), how both machines and humans cross the boundaries that was marked for them by public works and how these people's facial expressions and body gestures spell hesitations and cautions against one another.

but while walking and observing people passes, an image gives a total irony of the picture. it was a small boy sitting on the foundation of one of the light posts. he was not wearing any shirt and feet bare naked against the harsh cemented road accentuated of almost everything you could think of. street dirt and vehicles exhumes left traces on the boy's fragile and thin body. fluids were running down his nose. but behind that i can tell that the boys has good looks (oh no, excuse me from your pedophilia issues), his eyes were focused in total absence as if he doesn't see the people walking pass and towards him. then he smiled.

then i thought of myself when i was his age. what i wearing, where are we living and what was running in my mind during those days. probably, i am wearing my favorite white astro boy shirts and khaki pants---tucked in, which was my signature fashion look. hey i was 8, blame it to my school! during those time, we were living on the top floor of a building in caloocan along mabini st. and thinking of nothing but to get to school tomorrow and play again since we don't have any neighbors or kids in the building to play with. i only have my classmates and service busmates as friends before. but i strongly suggest not to send your kids to service buses. you don't have the slightest idea what is in store to them inside those moving big chunk of metals.

back to the boy, i wanted to ask him what he was doing there? where his parents are? why he is not in school? if he already had lunch or even breakfast and tons and tons of questions more (pretending i was naive about all these things). but then i noticed 5 more kids running towards him, pretty much his age as well. each one is holding an improvised musical instrument either a string of flattened bottle caps or empty milk cans. they also had red chinese envelops or ampao.

suddenly, they bravely cross the middle of the street and swiftly hang themselves along passing jeepnies and sang out of the beat christmas carols. then, i realized it was already a new month. it was the first day of december, the start of the christmas season. they say that december is a child's favorite month. since during this month, gifts are all over the place. but then i thought, how would it be for these street kids? yes, there are also a lot of charitable activities that are being conducted during this season. but then again, what happens after the season ends. can they wait until the next year? or are they even still here?

probably, its just that child issues are the kind of issues that easily melts my heart. i just felt that they are too vulnerable and innocent to handle this harsh realities of life. but come to think of it, these days, the difference between a child and an adult person in terms of surviving is becoming closer and closer. what would matter is how they utilize things and situations that are available for them. nonetheless, personally, i believe that life experiences and readiness to face it follows a particular systematic levels and stages depending in context.

a human being should be able to atleast experience each vital life stages to prepare him/her to next phase of life. although, i may also be wrong. i don't even know what vital life stages are these or probably i am just inventing and theorizing something again out off my track. but i may not be on their shoes nor know the kind of life they have, but definitely all of us will agree that there is something either wrong or lacking to these kids. from this point of my life, i honestly don't know who else to blame. i want to blame it to the government but they are already busy squeezing the truth of the zte scandal from jocjoc volante. aside from the fact that i am not seeing the point anymore of blaming it always to them when all they have to do is come up with an excellent political strategy to route those issue to somewhere else until everyone forgets about it. i want to blame their parents for being so sexually active. but i can't thinking of various considerations aside from poverty. believe me, there are a lot of stories: from the lame belief that the more children you have, the more chances the family will be richer than they currently are to such as offsprings from rape or what not. sometimes, i even reach a point that i want to blame myself for just minding my own problems, for being selfish and for being so petty about things that i deemed as life wrecking.

but probably, life just works that way. someone needs to be at the bottom for other people to be on the middle and at the top and for the society to survive--- conflict theory!

bottomline: life is not always fair to all and probably that boy already know this and all he could do is to smile upon those small things that he has and doing. so for me, i'll just keep on smiling.