Three beers and a crispy pata

The evening started out eerily enough, we found ourselves a prisoner of a hospital’s OB-Gyne Department. 3 smokers desperately wanting of a nicotine fix under threat of the hospital’s exorbitant smoking fine (P1,000 to be caught smoking within the premises? No wonder I hate hospitals!). We made up every excuse to make our way through the maze of wards and offices leading to the hospital gates. But of course, with the birthday party in full swing smoking breaks were few and far between.

The clock struck 12 and we got ready to be going, armed with the perfect excuse we gave our leaves to our host and hostess, it was Pye’s birthday and the ever-present crispy pata was calling out to us.

So we found ourselves at our usual watering hole in Makati. The 3 losers, Edu, the birthday boy, and myself. We met each other freshman year in high school and year after year, despite not seeing each other as often, we keep re-discovering the expression that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

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Bernard, the soon-to-be married doctor friend of ours, required us to attend his fiancee’s birthday bash for a fitting. We wondered what the fitting was for as the tailor made hideously erroneous (that can’t be right, miss… no way is my waistline that big!) measurements of our out of shape and pathetic bodies.

We were discussing something else when Pye suddenly burst out laughing at what seemed to be a logical explanation for the measurements… it was to be a themed wedding… and given Bernard’s love of anime, could the wedding be a celebration slash cosplay? Now the three of us were laughing, and pleading to our hosts to be garbed ala-Naruto.

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Standing outside the hospital gates, we spied a 7-11 at the corner. It was agreed that a slurpee, no matter what flavor, would greatly enhance our smoking pleasure. We made our way to the store, filled our tumblers with the brightly colored slush and went outside, delighting in brain freeze in a cup.

It’s a wonder how slurpee never gets old. Anytime of day, one could always whet up an appetite for this concoction of brightly colored sugar syrup in crushed ice. And even through the inconvenience of the inevitable brain freeze, you’d still want more of the stuff.

We finished off our slurpees and each lit another cigarette. No hurry going back to the party yet, this was just as fun.

*****

It was another of those looking back conversations… the kind when you reminisce to a time when something you now take for granted was such a big deal in yesteryears, like the telephone. Back when telephones weren’t a common household fixture, the red old public pay phone was such a luxury to encounter. There was one in our high school and we hogged it all afternoon talking to girls. Then it was changed to the shiny silver ones and we no longer found any use for the hundred or so quarters that we had accumulated.

Back then, we had our trusty little phonebooks slipped into our wallets. And we remembered a lot of phone numbers. We also remembered how grumpy or irritated fathers generally sounded like, and what do you say when the father asks what your relationship is with his exclusive-girl’s-school attending daughter?

*****

Fathers are a usual topic among us, probably because we eventually see ourselves becoming one eventually. Turns out we have all limited contact with our dads presently, all for different reasons. Each of our dads have different personalities, and maybe it’s just as well that not one of them has ever met the other as it would be too awkward if we ever found out that they talked about us the same way we talk about them.

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Edu asks if I’d be interested to go out with an officemate of his… a 22-year old graduate of the Ahrrneo. I say why not… what’s 10 years, right? He laughs and tells me better I not.

A testament to getting old, we talk about the young and how much different this generation set is compared to as how we saw ourselves. These “punks” are taking over the world right now, and for the likes of us, all we can do is sit back and watch them trample over us. Oh well, better start saving up for that retirement home.