Gypsy had tagged me on writing about someone that is most memorable to me that I could consider as a God’s Gift. To be honest, I found it hard to fathom how could there be just one person that is God’s Gift to me for in my life, I can consider so many, like my four precious kids, my mother and father, my grandpa and grandma, my wife, my siblings, my aunts and uncles, cousins and countless friends.
But let me tell you a story about Michael. He ain’t relative but when I was a kid, he was one guy that I’ve learned what the word bestfriend means. One day, we even had a debate about what’s the meaning of the word “bestfriends”, like could there be more than one bestfriend or only one. Or was it that he was more of a bestfriend than my cousin named Budda to which I answered cousins are cousins and they ain’t friends at all so he was absolutely my bestfriend then.
I like to tell about Michael since we had lots of fun before. I think when I was a kid who had always loved to play, it was always with Michael that I had lots of fun. We played basketball and card games.
He had invented this card game scheme where the loser had to drink water in a round. I told him then that it was such a bad idea of a game since I couldn’t take one more glass of water. So we stopped playing that game.
One day, some lads from the other side of the neighborhood came to our area to play basketball. While I was holding the ball, and then dribbling towards the hoop for a cool lay-up, one of the lads from the other side of the neighborhood had hit me with a very hard foul, that is, by tugging down my shooting arm and as a result, I fell so hard to the ground. I got bruised in some parts of my body. Then Michael said to me not to fret about it and just keep on playing. When he got the ball, he drove the ball hard into the basket and when the opponent that had hit me previously attempted to stop him, he let off a very mean elbow into the chest of the opponent and the lad went down breathless to the ground. We almost had fisticuffs at that moment luckily we were in our territory that the guys from the other side of the neighborhood just went off their way.
Now that makes me felt thankful to Michael for he had felt so bad about me getting hurt badly that he had made it a point that I got my revenge. Not that I wanted it or had egged him to do it. I bet he should have not done it. But he did.
I remember this very funny moment about him when one day we found a friend trying to sling guava fruits from a nearby tree. Michael and I approach the friend. Michael started to teach him how to sling and by the way he did it, I felt so alarmed because he was trying to teach the guy to sling backwards. And to my amazement, the friend really had followed his instructions and got himself hit in the forehead. Luckily, it wasn’t a huge stone that the other friend had used, but he did cry a lot. Now I say it was a funny moment with Michael when in fact he was so mean when he tried to teach a friend to sling the wrong way when in fact it should not have been. He was so mean that way. But it became such a funny memory to me for I couldn’t imagine why in the hell that other friend followed that wrong sling instruction. He should have known better in the first place.
One day, Michael told me that in school he had a very nice sounding nickname. I said what was that name. He said “Sneek”. I said why “sneek”? Was he fond of sneaking around? No, he said, it was because his favorite kung fu style was that of a snake, like Jackie Chan’s. Oh, “snake” became “sneek” because he had a visayan diction since he was of visayan descent.
Me and Michael had always love to drink champagne on warm afternoons. Everytime I have some money from my grandfather, I always called him out from their old wooden house by whistling (that’s the way we signal our presence) to drink champagne at our favorite sari-sari store. It’s not the real champagne that we drank but Coca-Cola that we shook so hard in bottles and so that by that movement, the soda goes bursting out. We called it “champagne”.
One day I’ve learned that he had a calculator that was given him by his aunt from America. And then I’ve learned that he had given it to my younger brother. I felt so bad about that of course since I was his bestfriend and he should have given it to me.
So with my hurt feelings, I went to the favorite sari-sari store and drank “champagne” all by my lonesome, while telling the tindera how Michael was such an ingrate, where I was always buying him Coca-Cola and then when he had a calculator for giving away, he gave it to somebody else.
The next day, Michael had learned what I told the tindera and berated me about me saying something about me always buying him “champagne” and that he do not want any of my “champagne” from then on.
He was so mad. But I felt I should be madder at him.
Months later, Michael flew to Los Angeles as a permanent immigrant without saying goodbye to me. I really wonder if he was really that mad at me. I am at a lost somehow.
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