Experience plays a great role to man’s development in terms of knowledge as well as all the aspects in life. If you put it in some cases, it serves as the clues in a mystery, an evident to a crime/case, and a script to a play. So missing an experience means missing one half of one’s life. To put it simply, it was like a piece in a puzzle, without its presence the puzzle will not be completed.
As for myself, I have so many unforgettable experiences that I can share with everyone. The one and most precious event ever happened to me was during my childhood stay at my Lolo and Lola’s house. Actually half of my childhood was spent with my grandparents. First was when I was 3-5 years of age, and the second one was when I was 8-12 years old. I may be far from my parents for those years, but I’m not sad about it, for the fact that there are people there who made me realized how wonderful life is, despite each individual’s status in the economy. There, I have many tastes of hardships when it comes to money. I even remembered the time when we run out of rice and viand, it’s funny to say but for the whole day we only ate root crops. Sometimes, there’s no viand, so we will use salt as the substitute, or if there’s still some used oil left then we will mixed it with our rice and, voilà it’s ready to eat. At first I felt like not eating it, but it’s really delicious if there are many of you in the table.
I also experienced harvesting rice, corns, mangoes, lanzones, santol, and etc. there together with my brother and cousins. When we are in the fields guarding the rice, we will fill our time playing with leeches by putting ashes on them; it’s a common knowledge for all of us that ashes can kill leeches so before we went to the field we will see to it that we have prepared ashes, on the other hand it’s also our protection from them.
And of course when the most awaited season comes (mango season) we will prepare flashlights and torch in advance. What for? Honestly, we will use it when it was 2:30 or 3:00 am to get mangoes. It’s easier to get tons of mangoes early in the morning for there are so many falling one’s ( which are done by the bats, but since it was heavy they will have a hard time carrying it and it end up falling) left at that time. At some point, it is difficult to get mangoes from the tree for it was so big and most of its fruits were at the top. No one would dare to climb it, except my uncle and my two male cousins. So relying to the bats was our option.
If we had free time, especially during holidays all of us including our neighbors who were almost the same age as us will be playing a game, which is most of the time a boyish game. We, females don’t stand a chance to complain, because there were only the three of us who bravely join the game. It hurts, yes, when you’re being hit, but we must carry the pain, after all no one force us to take part in it. Until such time were being used to it, instead of pain you’ll feel the excitement in the game.
I grew within a male atmosphere, maybe that’s the reason why I hit someone instead of slapping them, like most girls do when they get upset. Just like the time when I get angry with my brother, I’m not a violent person as well as I’m not the type who uses words when getting angry, I even keep control regarding with my temper, but I must really full with him at that moment so I hit him, and guess what he did, he hit me also, worst it was on my stomach, so it’s really painful, but thanks to our games, (those moments where they always hit me with those hard things), I’m not a stranger to that feeling any longer.
During my birthday, my grandpa will only kill one of his chickens and cook it for me, nothing more. My grandparents were not actually using electricity, so it was so dark and it was so quite for there’s only the few of us. After the celebration, we get back to our daily routine. During evening we must sleep early in order to save , gasoline were expensive, so we can’t afford to waste even a single drop. We girls of the family were also prohibited of going out with friends without their permission, and we must speak when were given a permission to talk. I guess that’s one of the reasons why I found it hard to talk to people older than me. For I was raised by my grandparents telling that, it is a bad manner to talk to people older than you in a way like how you treat those people who was the same age as yours. They are strict when it comes to those things for they grew up being trained also by their grandparents when they were young, specially my Lola, with proper manner. If you’ll see my Lola personally you will be awed by her actions, she walks and speaks in a lady manner, and her actions were organized, she works properly in a right manner. As what as she have told us, her grandparents were half Spanish, so when she was young, every time she made a mistake they will punish her by kneeling on a sack of salt or being beaten by a “latigo”, so they must be careful in there actions. I must be thankful they didn’t do the same thing to us, most likely to a clumsy girl like me.
Staying there was so unforgettable. I gained some experiences which I know that can be an advantage for me in some situations someday, and I learned so much for all those years.
