Lalang

Our school held its intramurals the first week of October. Since I am not athletic, I was asked by the class to join the scrabble event. And I did. Though this was my first time to join, I felt confident that I will be the champion, heck, even if I only read one book twice a year, at my age, I will still have an advantage even over the graduating students (I’m still a junior). So, I sat on my first match and it was a breeze; I easily won the first table. I felt a little guilty about what I had done; I felt like I’m taking a candy away from a child. To appease my conscience, what I did was to give my younger opponents tips on playing scrabble. “Look, you don’t just lay your tiles, you must know where you’ll get the most points, and at the same time you must make sure that you will make your opponents life miserable—don’t open any squares. If you have no good turn, then just stymie your opponent. You must know how to calculate, it’s just like playing poker.” I lectured. I know that they are not experienced scrabble players. They have seen too few deaths in their lives…err…what I mean to say is, they don’t have much experience playing scrabble in wakes. Then I showed them how to do it, how to connect those “s” and how to add prefixes and suffixes. They listened very well and when the second table came, the funny thing was I lost my game to the very people I lectured on. They played their tiles very well, they learned how to hold on, how to attach those “s” and prefixes and suffixes, they made my life miserable—I lost badly! I have no other explanation but to think that they ganged up on me. Anyway, I accepted my lost and told them that it was a job well done. The consolation was, they learned from me.

Here’s another experience with the same story line. Last year I was asked to join the inter campus Professional Education Quiz bee. I became the campus’ representative because I won the campus level competition. Of course my feeling was, again, that I’m taking candies from children. Anyway, the campus level competition was easy because the questions were multiple choice questions.

When I arrived at the main campus to register, the first thing I did was to ask the professor in charge if there was an age limit to the contest. That was my way of telling them that I’m the contestant and not the campus director. I mean, I had to humor them because when I’m in my school uniform they, the professors from other campuses, give me that calculating, confused, and amazed look. But most smile and tell me to “keep it up”. The same story, I won the campus level but I lost the University level. The problem was in the campus level the questions were not multiple choice. I can’t use my deductive powers. I lost miserably. There was a consolation though, a cute instructor from Antipolo (I think) approached and told me “George you’re a winner too”. Hay, you lose some you win some. I was so elated with what she said that I went home, skipped the “formal” lunch, and washed our dirty clothes.

Words of encouragement are powerful especially if they come from people who you know love’s you or in that case from a total stranger who does not personally know you at all because you know that they meant well. I am in the student publication and I tell my co-student staffs the difference between positive and negative criticism. It is not in the content of what is being said, whether it is negative or positive or hurting or uplifting, I tell them that words are not the measure of positive and negative criticism. The real measure of criticism is the people who give the criticisms. If a criticism, whether it was hurting or uplifting was given by a well meaning, credible and honest person, it will always be constructive no matter how hurtful the words may come. But if the criticism whether positive or not, whether it can lift one up to cloud nine or bring one down, came from a sycophantic disreputable person the criticism would always be negative, harmful even.

This is the story of my life-- a story of winning the non essential games and of losing the games that counts.

I’m almost halfway through my life, and I hope I break the pattern.