On turning ten

[October-November 2007 issue, The Benildean]


You always admire what you really don't understand.
--Blaise Pascal


The scholarly philosophers of who-could-care-less would reason that ignorance is the origin of fear; in actuality, a sincere stupidity masquerading, in a sheep’s clothing, as plain harmless innocence.

Still, I have faith in the philosophy that ignorance is bliss.

At age four, I thought that the Cheez Whiz fairy really lived beneath the Cheez Whiz pot label.

As a child, I hated the gloppy, sodium-laced pseudo cheese junk that is Cheez Whiz. Playacting as my yellow hell in a bottle, Cheez Whiz has ruined innumerable lunch hours and birthday blow-outs. It counted as one of my many childhood saboteurs of fun—alongside obnoxious cough syrups and playtime cornstarch powder—that aroused the tantrums I curb within the four walls of my four-year-old head.


However, I recall feeling especially high-strung whenever my mother brings home a bottle of Cheez Whiz for my unfortunate sandwich school lunches. The glee is rooted from the happy thought that I have yet another opportunity to take prisoner the Cheez Whiz fairy that lived beneath the Cheez Whiz pot label.

I'd rip the label off each time and think: She hides pretty well.

The urban legend of swallowed citrus seeds lodging their roots into the walls of your gut enthralled me more than the blah fairy-tales of Disney princesses clad in bed sheet-gowns. I imagined having an orange tree breed slowly beneath my skin, with its red-yellow fruits cheek to cheek with my otherwise maroon heart. The resentful nanny swore the branches would begin to crawl out of my ears before I am ten. Of course, I waited for that one momentous occasion in vain.


At age six, I thought that Batibot* was an actual place filled with peculiar looking humans with patchwork brains and prosthetic noses; some quiet little town that my mother just could not locate with her car, despite the fact that she had the brains, ability and gas money to locate all the godforsaken Shoe Marts mushrooming in the metropolis.

And then I grew up to be nine and began realizing that Kuya Bodgie* is too happy for a middle-aged man—his method of eternal kindliness was so original, I remember how no adult in my childhood existence was too willing to smile sympathetically whenever I skip my afternoon nap. Mostly any virtual thing made my middle-aged father yell. Kuya Bodgie, I thought, must be bluffing it too perfectly.

At ten, I unlearned, gradually, the lies of special effects and the many fish stories of television and bed time fairy-tales.

And I learned not to trust and to stop believing.

***

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

--Billy Collins, On turning ten


*Batibot is the Philippines' equivalent to Sesame Street.
*Kuya Bodgie is Batibot's most famous host.