child's play

background music : back on the chain gang by the pretenders

My mom never let me took siestas as a child because I would be up all night and screw up everybody’s sleep. On the very rare occasions that I did doze off, everybody pretty much left me alone. But not my evil aunt and cousin – the evil twins, Charry and Jocel. They used to sneak into my other aunt’s room and wake me up with the sole intention of pissing me off.

You know what they say about how it is better to play jokes on a drunk, but never on a person who just woke up? That is so true with me. You never, EVER wake me up in the afternoon – I turn to little hulk and destroy everything in my path. The evil twins know this all too well and they wake me up for the exact purpose of watching me destroy whatever toys I have. After the carnage, I would go back to my little negrita mode and cry myself silly for wrecking my toys, much to their delight. They would then run off and tell on me. I would get punished for destroying my toys and I will be told I will not be given any more. Only my dad would take my side and soothe my little broken heart with a wink and a promise that he will buy me a new toy when he can.

Those two really sucked. Thank goodness I’m pretty well-adjusted now, otherwise I’d probably be this nervous cowering and stuttering wreck. You would if you had to spend your formative years with these two. Here’s a menu of the games we used to play :


1) Hide and Seek - For some reason, I am always it. And for some reason, I had to count 1 to 67 when we play this game. Of course I never find these two because they would be well out of the hiding perimeters and I would usually find them back inside my grandma’s room watching cartoons like nothing happened.

2) The Office game - We set up under the big round table. We have old phones and paper and pens and postcards and pretend that we work in an ultra important office. Of course the twins are the big bosses and I’m the secretary. Not much fun since they always order me around.


3) The Playhouse game - My grandma had a bahay kubo built for us. It was pretty neat actually. It was a good sized nipa hut furnished with a bunk bed, a kitchenette for our clay pots and stove, a working sink – the works. We even had a sign nailed to the post “La Casita 123" for us three senoritas. So we would play house – another genius game for the evil twins for Jocel would be the dad, Charry would be the mom. You’d think I’ll be the kid right? Nope. I’m the maid. I’m Inday, thank you. I had to wash the dishes, gather leaves for our pretend food and clean the house! I sometimes wonder if it would be a more fun game if I was the dog, Bantay. They’d probably treat me better those two buggers!

4) Road runners - As my parents were still both struggling with money, I did not have a bike for myself. There was a bike in my grandma’s, but the evil duo naturally hogged it. It was a three-wheeler, a nifty little blue bike where one can stand at the back while the other rides it. Of course there was no room for a third person. Everyday I hope would be my lucky day when they would let me ride with them. I usually have to wait for them to go have their daily siesta so I can ride the bike, but that wasn’t much fun. So one day, the ever resourceful little Joffin asked Tubal, the gardener if she can use the wheelbarrow so she can go “ride” with the evil twins. You can probably guess what happened. I ended up playing rickshaw-wallah to these two. Grrr.
Not a lot of fun either.


and last but not the least ...

5) The Superfriends Game - I hate hate hate this game. I’ve always wanted to be Wonderwoman . I would use my magic lasso and tie up the evil twins,lock them up in my invisible jet and drop them off to Tawi-tawi or some distant uninhabited island. But no. The evil twins have to be the Wondertwins and of course yours truly can only be... Gleek! – the frigging monkey. Sigh.



Good times.


So yeah, pretty much that was my preschool childhood with the evil twins. When I started school I loved it. I was very active in school and I had a lot of nice playmates. I usually played with the boys because their games were so much fun. The girls usually played with their Barbie dolls and mine were all decapitated, so I didn’t really play those until I was in second grade when my dad bought me two replacement Barbie dolls for the two that I had mutilated one frenzied afternoon after being woken up by the twins.



Time space warp......


I got my day of justice one summer day in 1999 when Jocel visited us after 18 years of living in the states. I cornered both Charry and Jocel and gave them a mouthful of my pent-up anger. They got a bit scared of me because I barely gave them any space to butt in. They vehemently denied being mean to me of course. I told them to shut up and listen to me, for once. I said I should actually thank them for those things that they did because somehow it helped me toughen up and become a well-adjusted young adult, I just warned them that what they did may come back and bite them in the ass one day, when somebody else would decide to bully their future children.


I walked away feeling good that they had a lot to think about.


Noo-ni-noo-ni-noo.