Growing into a class of our own

WHAT was the best time of your life?

Wedding day? Birth of your first child? Graduation from college? Winning an award or coming on top of a competition?

One's reply may depend on his age or present situation in life. Surprisingly, in my informal survey among those of my age (mid to late 30s), none of the above figured in their answers. The surprise off-the-cuff winner is high school days.

Even happily married people are perhaps too engrossed in the daily routine of family life to think of a single instance of bliss in it. Career-type friends are perhaps too caught up in the pressures of their work to be able to distill a moment of joy in their accomplishments.

But high school is an altogether different thing. To round a baduy topic, and I think it's not only because of Sharon Cuneta's hit song of the same title.

There is something about this period of life that brings nostalgia for the carefree days of youth--the small escapades, the real friendships, the unfettered dreams and hopes for the future.

What brought this flood of memories is the spate of e-mail messages I received from high school friends who chanced upon the recently launched internet version of Philippines Today.

(Incidentally, why has there been none from my college friends?)

The first one wrote that I have been on 4-A 81's (our 4th year class at the all-boys Xavier University High School, Cagayan de Oro City) worldwide manhunt list for 20 years. The figure is really closer to 15 years, as I have stayed in touch until college and then relocated to Japan.

An attached class directory and an outdated update described me as having been "(sighted in Japan en-route to USA or Bosnia?), last seen around Tokyo looking for junk appliances to smuggle and sell here."

When I complained that the description was not really wide of the mark, but could be embellished a little more, I was told that that was my penalty for keeping myself incommunicado all these years.

This repartee automatically transported me to those years when our bonds of friendship were as unspoken of as they were solid.

My re-introduction to the class e-mail group began with "Benigno or Benigs is already known as Benny."

As e-mails poured in, signed only in nicknames as in the good old days, the faces that have already receded from memory started to re-compose themselves vividly in my mind. The wonder about the internet is that it brings people together instantly from all corners of the globe. Some of those who got in touch, if only to confirm my e-mail address, were from as far away as the US, Australia, Singapore and Malaysia. A virtual reunion was instantly called.

In a day, I was able to configure more or less our class demographics. As could be said of any other segment of Philippine society, my 4-A class is a microcosm of a nation in diaspora. My classmate Alan Miano describes the good number of us who live abroad as "economic exiles." It goes without saying that most of them still live and work in the same area.

Actual class reunions are a bit uncomfortable, I was told. (I have never been to one.) One of the causes of this discomfort is the inevitable comparison, explicit or implicit, of statuses and achievements.

Breezing through the class update, including the imaginative portions (like mine which at least correctly located me), I am amazed by the simple fact that a group of boys who grew up and dreamed together had followed completely different trajectories in life.

As boys, we already had inklings of what we wanted to be. But to reunite, if only virtually, as doctors, bankers, teachers,managers, entrepreneurs, public servants, politicians, or simply as grown up men, is a staggering experience. Likewise, on the lighter side, I could imagine those of us with hirsute deficiencies being mutually flustered in an actual reunion.

Some of us may be carrying the burden of high expectations. Many may be trying desperately to live up to them. This may be a good time to check on our progress in life.

But I am sure many will agree that no one has and will ever reach a hierarchy of status or achievement that gives the same joys of youth--when only dreams bounded our goals and friendships were truly born from the heart.

That's the place and time of life we all want to revisit in a reunion.*

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