so it was one day away 'til my cousin's debut party, and i still had none to cover my hind limbs. my mother, true to her rock star persona, wailed her vocal chords out, telling me to get my ass moving, and get myself some nice, decent slacks, if i didn't want to end up floating in davao river.
what the hell is wrong with wearing maong pants, all blue and rugged, complete with tattered holes baring the skin of my knees, anyway? i asked. it is a semi-formal party after all, and it kinda looks cool.
and my mom's reply, to quote verbatim:
"KUUL? wa ka gikilatig kolor? muadto kag debut nga mura kag N-P-EH (as in NPA)? pastilan na lang dong, pakaulaw lang gyud ka sa pamilya!!!....." achuchuchuchublahblahBLAH
throw in a couple of expletives here and there (actually a dozen would be more fitting), and you get the complete picture of her rock n' roll 
entreé.
heeding none of her theatrics, i hissed back... so?
then she went to the kitchen, got a hold of what seems to be a slender uhm... apparatus made of wood. there she went again, threatening me with her bunal. theatrics or not, i knew that thing could hurt me.
not that i'm afraid or anything (i'm 18 years old, why the hell would i be afraid of some
pathetic little wooden stick? i can perfectly defend myself), but i knew better than to mess with my mom in her tina arena/serial killer mode. or maybe i was just not in my best mood for another verbal/kung-fu-kawayan showdown that has become a trademark of our mother-son relationship.
anyway, i did my duty as a "member of my family", went to the mall, and looked for some "nice, decent slacks". the tricky thing about having my kind of body form is that nothing fits. i had to ransack the whole department store, or least the whole block of "men's wear", to find anything that hugged my waist and legs the way slacks are supposed to. after a long time of searching (for nothing... the smallest waist size that they had was size 31!!), and with my varicose veins threatening a bloody revolution, i finally did what i promised never to do again.
i went to "children's wear".
ugh. the humiliation. the surprised look of the sales ladies. the condescending sneer of the public. well, it was not that bad, and those sneers were prolly a figment of my paranoid imagination, but still. the reality of it is, everyone that i know, of my own age, are all growing up as man and woman, and here i am, still stuck choosing garment as a freaking child. but that is a different story altogether, and emo is just not my thing these days, so let's leave it at that.
unsurprisingly, i found the slacks that fit me just right. what surprised me though were the sales men and ladies. i was inside the fitting room, and when i went out, the sales person attending me went missing. very unprofessional of her. then i heard this jingly, bopping tune, christmas bells and santa claus's jolly laughter spreading sugar and sunshine in the atmosphere.
then boom! there the sales people were. all lined up, with brown horns in their heads (i suppose so that they'll look like reindeers, but i'm thinking of a whole other thing). they were smiling and.. and... dancing, shaking their groove thangs!. dancing, for the love of humanity! and they're, they're synchronized. apparently, they have a frakking choreography--jumps, waves, formations, they might as well have done a pyramid and basketball toss. and then i glanced at the other side of the floor, and much to my amusement, the sales agents were doing the same "routine".
i remember a friend telling me how wonderful life would be if it was turned into a musical, and that's just how i felt at that moment. i let out a a chuckle. the world may be crumbling, swamped in this "global financial crisis", each one fearing for their life as another Great Depression is looming, and what do people do?
they dance.
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