Smoked Out

Every so often, usually after a long absence, the gas station rejects me. It's either my seat stays occupied by someone else way beyond my saturation point, or the free Wi-Fi gives and I am forced to play minesweeper or *gasp* work. This time, it chose a more sinister and life threatening tact to get rid of me... it's smoking me out.

Being situated right smack in between the highway and a few hectares of rice paddies, the gas station is subject to smoke from the farmers burning off their waste. It's a usual practice intended to give the soil back some of the nutrition that it lost during the season. But of course, it's bothersome nonetheless. There's really no point in quitting smoking when you subject yourself to this phenomenon. I stand my ground though, hopeful that the wind would shift and save me from choking to death.

After a few minutes, the wind changes direction and I am able to breathe normal air again. I light a stick of cigarette during this pleasant break, quite ironic, isn't it?

*****

A new found friend of mine sent me a link to "Rainbow Connection" as sung by Kermit the Frog. I couldn't believe that I forgot this version of the song... I generally remember most of the skits on Sesame Streets growing up, but until I saw this one, it was lost to me. The video suddenly brought back memories of early morning cartoons, as well as the cartoon parade every Saturday morning. I owe these muppets and cartoons a lot, after all they were my first teachers in the English language.

My family wasn't really big on speaking English at home. Amongst us, communication was a mix of Ilonggo and Tagalog and very rarely did my parents switch to English unless... well, never actually. But even then, they had the wisdom to keep the television on for us kids to absorb. They didn't bother to translate Bugs Bunny's dry humor into the dialect, they trusted those animated friends of ours to impart an understanding that would serve us well in school. (In retrospect, Coyote and Roadrunner were too stingy and never taught us anything in the field of linguistics save for the occasional beep-beep and an introduction to the Acme Manufacturing Company) I suspect though that our parents appreciated the calming effects of television on sugar-high powered toddlers more than any educational benefit.

When we got a bit older, we graduated from cartoons to watching canned programming and movies on Betamax. English was now more complicated than "beep-beep" and "Hi, I'm Kermit the Frog here for Sesame Street News!". There was more to this language than what was actually uttered! We were introduced to the "non-literal" side of the language. Vocabulary was also improving, and now we had an awareness of proper grammar. This served me well in grade school and even in high school. I could never identify what a past-participle was nor tell if it was tensed past-perfect. But I knew what "sounded" right and what was horribly out of syntax, this saved me from flunking a lot of English classes.

*****

Do I have a point? Well, not really. Was just babbling as usual. You see, over the years I've received some compliments with regards to my use of English. They usually ask where I went to school and immediately assume that's where I learned it. So I smile and don't bother telling the truth. It's kinda weird answering "I learned it all from Saturday morning cartoons."