The Boys and the Songs « Kat’s World 3

Entries categorized as ‘The Boys and the Songs’

It all begins with the first love of my life, Arvin. Well, I don’t know if I can really call him that, considering the fact that we met when we were both nine years old and grade three students the small town of Imus, Cavite. He was my seatmate, the person I squeezed with everyday. He is right-handed and I’m a lefty so there was no problem. The only problem was that we were three kids sharing a desk meant for two–Arvin was to my right and there was Lisa to my left.

In those roaring years of the early nineties, the elementary culture was the same as it is today and as it was when our parents and our parents’ parents were young. You had to have a crush. Girls would come in flocks and each girl would pick a boy to be her “crush” and sometimes a group would pick just one boy to be their crush. It’s not a serious matter, of course we were kids, but I was certain mine was, because I liked Arvin to the point that I imagine a world with only the two of us. So I couldn’t tell anybody he was my crush, because it was truer than I ever thought it could be.

He was so gosh darn cute, that I can say. He had a Jose Rizal hairdo and his skin was reddish-brown. He was always wearing a polo that was ironed crisp, and there was always a towel on his back, under his shirt.He carried a briefcase–yep, a briefcase–and always had a hanky in his pocket. Aside from that, he was a goody-good boy who looked like he couldn’t even hurt a fly.

Me, I was a smelly kid unmindful of proper hygiene. I didn’t have anyone to really look after me thoroughly, so I was always dirty. My school uniform would be all creased and my bag looked like it had been buried during the Pinatubo ashfall. I wore loose, sometimes mismatched socks, and my shoes were white when they were really black, and black when they were really white.

Arvin and I were typical classmates. We chatted when there was no teacher, talked about the boy in front of us who had a lot of boogers, and tried to cover our papers during quizzes in a phony attempt to prevent each other from copying. We had a lot of laughs, but mostly the nonsensical stuff kids concern themselves with. We totally clicked and I felt like we were best friends. At the age of nine I was convinced I was going to marry him. He was great. He was perfect. He was everything.

Only, he thought I was ugly.

How did I know that? The insensitive jerk said it himself. It happened when Rivermaya’s song “Ulan” was hitting the airwaves. I wrote the song on a page of my writing notebook—the kind with red and blue lines–and on the part where the lyrics were:

Tatawa na lamang
At bakit hinde,

He bluntly added:

Tatawa na lamang
At bakit hinde ka pangit Carneo?

And, as if that wasn’t enough, he actually shoved the page on my face, pointed to that part, and sang it together with his additional line. He laughed and laughed, highly amused with himself. He was the first one to permantly damage my self-esteem.

And it felt stupid because that didn’t stop me from liking him even more.

My other seatmate Lisa made the correct assumption that I liked Arvin, despite me denying it until I turned blue. One day, while Arvin was gone to attend a Cub Scout meeting, I was singing Rachel Alejandro’s “Paalam Na” while busy answering my Journey to Mathematics workbook. I got to the chorus and blurted :

“Paalam na….aking…mahal……..Kay hirap sabihin.
“Paalam na…aking….mahal……..Masakit isipin.”

“Yihee…” Lisa teased, much to my surprise.And when I asked why, she told me I was singing about Arvin. She said I sang:

“Paalam na….Arvin…mahal…..”

Up to now it’s still a mystery. Did Lisa forget to clean her ears that day, or did I actually say Arvin’s name without even knowing it?

Another day when Lisa was gone to attend a Star Scout meeting,and there was only Arvin and I on the desk, I started singing while copying notes the class secretary was writing on the board. He was engrossed in keeping his notes neat, while mine looked so messy, as the whole of me was. I was singing “Huwag na lang Kaya.”

“Nais ko ay ialay sa iyo……” I sang. An imaginary guitar was strumming in my head. “Ang puso ko…..”

And with that, he turned to me, looking alarmed. “Bakit? Bakit?Anong nangyari sa puso mo?” he joked.

Looking into his eyes, I went on with my song.

” Na umiibig sa iyo……”

A few seconds of utter silence. There we were, two children sitting face to face, looking eye to eye, both aware that something totally weird just happened.

“Ah….” was all that he could say. Then he went back to writing. He couldn’t hide the fact that he was blushing all over.

“There, ” I said to myself. “I said it Arvin. Now what?”

Now, nothing.

He dismissed that incident and I did too, and we went back to being classmates and friends. Well, I went back to imagining the Arvin-Ana world (I thought the fact both our names start with A was a sign),and he went back to being friends with his ugly, dugyut seatmate he didn’t even know was a girl.

Third grade came and went. By the time we were in the fourth grade, I was more smitten with Arvin than ever, and was heartbroken we weren’t seatmates anymore. That was the beginning of the dark years. That was the year he stopped talking to me.

He hasn’t talked to me to this very day.

Categories: The Boys and the Songs