It was the year I began to serve a three-year stint as an altar boy (“sacristan”), under the supervision of the head altar boy at the time, Ariel Canlas.
He would go on to become a civil engineer and now runs his own engineering and architectural design consultancy firm right here in Baguio City.
I was always assigned to service (we used the term “service” instead of “serve,” I don’t know why) the 5:00 o'clock daily afternoon mass, because I would be coming from school. Class dismissal at Baguio Central School, which was a 5-minute jog to the church, was at 4:30 pm.
That gave me just enough time to make the 5pm mass on most days—except Wednesdays when I’m a “cleaner.”
Back in the day, the school only had one janitor. There’s no way he could clean the main building (which had 20 classrooms spread on two floors and 2 wing basements), and another 20 more rooms in four “Marcos-type” prefab buildings spread around the school quadrangle.
So as a labor augmentation device, we pupils (that’s what elementary gradeschoolers were called) in every class were grouped into five.
Each group (about 7 or 8 kids) is charged with cleaning the classsroom after class on a particular day of the week. So on Wednesdays my group scrubbed the floor with our feet using coconut husks, swept the dirt off with walis tambo, wiped the window glass panes squeaky clean with a wet rag, and picked off the mud that had caked on the “doormat” made of tansans (bottle caps) nailed to an 18-inch square board, using a walis tingting (stickbroom). It was child labor, pure and simple.
Recently, I read on a newspaper how a wealthy parent in Quezon City sued a school teacher because she made her spoiled-rotten precious little boy take out the trashcan.
The parent sued under the “VAWC Law” which penalizes Violence Against Women AND CHILDREN. She claimed that her little boy suffered from “victimization” and “mental trauma” because being made to carry the trashcan in full view of other children made him the “object of derision” and “verbal remarks of cruel stupidity.” (then why sue the TEACHER?)
My reverie wandered back through time to our Grade 4 classmate, Lee Ignacio. He could turn his eyelids over, and roll his eyes all the way to the back of his skull, until nothing was showing in his eyes except all white!
Then he would slowly grope his way around the classroom like a zombie—it made the girls so sick to their stomachs, one of them threw up on the floor.
Just like that, me and a few other pals of Lee Ignacio who were laughing our hearts out—we were guilty of “cruel derision”—were rounded up by our homeroom teacher, Mrs. Elsie Gutierrez, “Whose stupid idea was all of this??”
Of course we all pointed at Lee, but it didn’t help. It didn’t save any of our skins, so to speak, and we ALL had to clean up the vomit off the floor—with our own handkerchiefs! Talk about teaching us NEVER to do anything like that ever again. Back then, WE were stupid, and nobody sued the teacher.
None of us even dared to tell our parents, either. Why? Because in those days—late 60s, early 70s—teachers and parents were in CAHOOTS!
Back to being a sacristan. I was not motivated by any moral calling, nor did I experience some kind of life-changing epiphany, to make me decide to “service” the temple of God.
It's just that long before Chin Alcantara and Juris Fernandez came up with “Make Your Mama Proud” (MYMP) as the name for their acoustic band, that was ALREADY the life goal of every kid in the 70’s.
If you grew up in the 70s, like me, you loved your mother and, although you didn’t really hate your father, you just didn’t want to be around him as much. He smoked, he drank and he owned a 2-inch wide leather belt.
I became a sacristan because I wanted to make my Mama proud. My constant service partner was another young boy my age, Fernando Lasala, who was from the Holy Family Elementary School, right beside the church. We always worked in two's.
We loved wearing the altar boys’ traditional vestments, which consisted of a full body length white habit—basically a lab gown but with the opening slit in the back so that the front was a seamless sheet of white. It was topped with a red sort of like a mid-rib square “camison” (it really was!) with delicate white lace trims and hemming.
Finally, we put on this gold “dragon collar” with fine gold thread needlework that the nuns had worked on all week. It was cut with a scalloped design that wrapped around our necks like a peacock’s tail fan. We looked like angry lizards.
But the mamas were proud to see their little boys in frock—diminutive little “mini-priests” scurrying about the church, looking like they’re about to be ordained and beatified on the same day.
Mama beamed and grinned from ear-to-ear, sitting on the front pews of Saint Vincent church, beside my more modestly-proud sister, Lavlina.
Mama would lean towards her and whisper, “Anak, tignan mo yung kapatid mo, o…kulang na lang tubuan ng pakpak!”
Even from so far, I could still faintly hear my sister respond, “e baka mauna pang tubuan ng tuka at saka tare sa paa yan, Mama!”
Women back then wore shrouds to church—called “belo”—and spared no effort embellishing them with embroidery, little beads and sequins—I mean they pimped these belos like they were cocktail dress accessories.
Even our young girl classmates each had her own belo which they made small enough to fold and keep in their purse.
And THAT led to its demise—the belo gradually shrank in size from a full-size shawl, to a tiny little crocheted circle placed on top of the head, then smaller and smaller still…before finally disappearing altogether sometime in the early 80s.
Which is just as well for my sister Lavlina, who really just used her belo--which was just large enough--mainly to cover even her mouth—because she knew I could read her lips!
Then the priest “celebrating” the mass (we used the term “celebrating” instead of leading or officiating--again I don’t know why) would finally get the proceedings going.
“The LORD be with you….” the priest greeted.
“And also with you…” the people answered, and we were off to the races.*
