By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
This is the time for class reunions and evaluation of class endeavors. Our high school class once had three scholars. We would pay their tuition and nothing more. Since they were studying in the province, the amount they needed was not really that much. Any class would have been able to pay the high school tuition of three students. In our case, we only had to shell out a lousy Pl,000 per head. Yes, it was that cheap. And yet it was a very big help.
But the success of such endeavor is dependent on one big factor— a very important person. He or she should be a member of the class who have the patience to pester everybody to shell out their commitment. In our case, though it was a lousy amount, it sometimes was difficult to get it. Not that some of our classmates tried to evade their obligation (everybody was willing to pay) but many times there are small factors that prevent the handing over of the amount. Lack of time, no common time for an appointment, out of town, nursing a hypertension, etc., are some of the reasons some pledges could not be collected.
This is not so different from having a class reunion.
The other month, some of our contemporaries in UP Los Banos wanted us to have a reunion. Letty Pilando and Loreto Tuba-ang came up with that great idea. So we texted some of our contemporaries to meet at the Pilando Building—that new and perhaps the best commercial and office building in town—for some merienda to plan out things. While some texted that they will arrive, they were no-shows.
Only four of us appeared—Loretto Tuba-ang, Letty Pilando, Rey Yawan and me. Looking at Rey Yawan, Loreto Tuba-ang and me, with our looks so ravaged by time, one would readily conclude that God was not always smiling on us throughout the past decades when we were dispensing our jobs or in the pursuit of our careers or professions, in the running of our family concerns, or in the management of our businesses, or personal affairs, etc.
While Loreto and Rey were slim, I would have looked better had I worn a maternity dress. It would have done a good job at hiding my overweight.
As to Letty Pilando, God must have been smiling on her. If not always, at least, relatively. For she looked young and beautiful. She was lean, jolly, and quite preppy. In short, she looked very good. Where did she find the Holy Grail?
After the pleasantries and we finally sat down to start talking about the reunion, the first question that came up is, “Who should be there?” It was the right question for the young ones or younger ones might not find us, the young once, interesting or even relevant in their present realities.
Then the situation I found myself in a year before cropped up in my mind. A contemporary I haven’t seen for decades suddenly called up to have lunch. He was in town for a management seminar among Dep’t of Agriculture officers. It used to be that whenever we met in the past, we were quite hopeful about the future. Our plans and dreams were always the topic. But when we last met, everything changed. We were talking of things like blood sugar and cholesterol levels, the supplements we were taking, about our doctors, etc.
But back to the plans for our reunion. Since were just four, we agreed to meet again and each of us promised to bring more people. That was more than a month ago. Up to now, no meeting yet. I think no one wanted to be so gung ho about it, or that some were a bit shy about being headstrong in pushing for it.
This is like our class endeavor earlier mentioned. The secret for its success is to have that very important person who will pester everybody to come for a meeting and take somebody along. That person in our case would be Letty Pilando. She is very amiable such that she would not offend anybody if she would be pestering us to move towards having that reunion.
As for me, I am uite ambivalent about it because chances are it will be on a weekend—a time for me to decompress. Sometimes I am flat on my back recovering from the weekend pressure of getting this paper out.
How about some long lunch meetings first?
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