Tuesday, February 14, 2023

in a time capsule [reentry 2008]

there are a lot of people and events that may come in someone's life but only a few will truly touch and etch a memory. high school without debate is one of them. here you will get to meet people from all walks of life, in several manners, mostly awkward since this is the stage when individuals are battling within--->

i am too young to be an adult, too old to be a child (read: adolescence). in this very stage, we tend to create personalities that we perceive to be pleasing to others. no one to blame: men are social beings- the more they behave the way society dictates them to be, the better it is for everybody. when i was thirteen i met this somewhat deviant classmate-dave. he is not like my bestfriend kristoffer (see him in blog entry BF-EVER), really! he was different!...

at such a young age, he seemed to be unmindful of what others may think of him, of his acts, of his words. don't get me wrong, he was seldom unpleasant but always always surprising. his surge of emotions will bring turmoil to a tamed conforming person. his laughter is contagious but so is his anger. his chivalry will make you smile but his apathy will make you cry too. i have tried to look at dave from a different perspective. (at 13, i thought i was a philosopher, a psychologist, or maybe just another lost soul waiting to be found again).

i saw him persevere as much as i saw him get wasted with foolishness. i saw his leadership, and his hardheadedness as well. i saw him falling in and out of love, hear him shouting and whisper at different times. he was a friend to me (or maybe i was a friend to him) ...i had time with him in a capsule. why dave? coz he reminds me that life is too short to be wasted on hiding and pretending to be so-oh-good when you can taste every detail of badness and somehow learn from it.

but years passed i lost track of my subject--- too many thoughts, too many people, too little time i guess. as we entered the university, i see little and little of him. once i saw him laughing with a group of thug-looking students in a kiosk-they all seem to be enjoying their chat, laughing boisterously at times. once i saw him all alone in a path from one building to another, i tried to catch up on him and ask how he was, he halted, stared at me confusingly, and just smiled. i dismissed it as a call to accept that the dave i knew, though nothing has changed physically somehow isn't exactly the same (who doesn't change anyway?).

i saw him a couple of times in a telecoverage of a campus demonstration (that made me smile and reminded me of my foolishness years before). and then nothing, just news that he graduated and somehow tried to conform in his own way. now...(fast forward) dave has popped out of nowhere and is keeping in touch (truly challenges my thoughts, and philosophies in more ways than one). my time in a capsule with him is opened and remembered but a new capsule is to be made (and so is a new blog entry?). he is a family man, a trusted employee, and a fun friend (though he always refutes coz he has different perspective of the word 'friend').

he still is the dave who helped me cope with culture-shock by making me more shocked (ready, set-laugh!), the dave who helped me bring the trash to the pit (and irritatingly threw the trashcan too when i jokingly suggested so---grrr!), the dave who shouts at her girl in the school campus, the dave who loves to tease --- he is the dave who fought with goliath (read: goliath=the need to conform) and won. there are a lot of people and events that may come in someone's life but only a few will truly touch and etch a memory. dave without debate is one of them.

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