My constipated Brain

    There is this trick I do in High School where I would browse thru the pages of a magazine then I'd ask somebody to pick a page. I would then describe the randomly picked page. It's not a word for word thing though, I would only point out, for example, that there is a picture of a girl on the right side of the page or that there is a soft drink ad on the left and so forth. It required no effort at all. Sometimes I could see the "pages" in my mind and I could even "flip" thru them to get to the one I need. It was more of a visual thing-- I could only recall the pictures and I forget them after a day or two. I could not recall text. Well, sometimes I can but not every time. It was a hit-and-miss.

    If there's one thing that can be said about the study of the human brain -- and especially in the field of memory -- it's that even today, it's notable less for what is known than for how much is not known. The workings of our brain remain, for the most part, a mystery. But if there are areas of consensus in the field of neurology, one of them is that the notion of "photographic memory," in which a person can take mental snapshots and recall every detail at a later time, has never been proved to exist. Scientists say it could be a version of "eidetic memory," which is, essentially, the medical term for crazy, crazy freakish recall.

    Am I making this up? Fat chance. My schoolmates would have figured it out on day one. It's something everybody talks about every time we have class reunions. Photographic memory or not one thing is for sure. Whatever it is it had served me well in school and in my profession as well. I had a leg up when examinations week comes up. And for the longest time I did not carry a datebook but remembered all my appointments. It was all good until I hit middle age. By that time I have been accumulating memories since I was maybe two or three years old. I should say that it isn't as if I have a day to day recording of everything that happened in my life. I only retain life events that made an impact on me and only those I personally experienced. Like there's this piece of memory that I vividly recall waking up a day after a flood and seeing millions (no, not really millions, but there was a lot) of hito on the yard of our host in Legaspi City. It's fragmented and I can't really connect it to other events but I do recall all the people I interacted with on that particular day. But as memories piled up-- the good as well as the bad, the ability for recall became more of a curse rather than a blessing. When an entire life is perpetually available, that life exists, in a sense, forever in present tense. And sifting through a perpetual and onrushing flood of memories is less fun than it sounds. It's hard, after all, to erase bad memories when you can't erase any memory at all.

    And that's the rub, I suspect that all these years I may have been suffering from depression stemming from the inability to forget unpleasant memories and experiences from the past. Particularly memories that had caused me so much pain. I think that this thing is likely the result of obsessive-compulsive thoughts rather than "photographic memory". I'll leave it to the experts. As far as I'm concerned I look forward to old age and the day I, hopefully, will be able to forget most if not unload all these "bad" memories that have clogged up my constipated brain all these years.

Johnny de Leon, Ngo-ngo and a deck of cards

   
    Grandmother calls out my name. I stood up, dropped whatever I was doing and raced into the house. By the time I ran up the stairs darkness has already crept into the house. Grandmother had gone back to the kitchen. Only the light in the kitchen is on. I would usually flop down on the floor near the kitchen doorway. From under the glass cabinet-- where grandmother kept her best china, I'd pulled out my stash of green army men then line them up for a make-believe reconnaissance mission.

     The AM radio is on, tuned in to the station of Johnny de Leon's program. It was actually the only radio station Grandmother listened to and Johnny de Leon was the king of the airwaves at that time. You could hear his voice early in the morning and again just before the day ends. He would do the news, commentaries and even dish out advices on relationships. On Friday nights there was "24 Oras" where he voices the character that would give resolution or a twist to a story that, you guessed it, happened all in one day.

    At six o'clock Johnny de Leon would break for evening prayers. He'd play a recording of the Angelus-- three Biblical verses describing the mysteries are recited as versicle and responses alternated with the "Hail Mary". After a short pause, a narration of the story of the "deck of cards" would follow. It's about a "soldier boy" who got into trouble when he was caught spreading a deck of cards during church service. He would be brought before the Provost Marshall where he would explain the meaning of each card. He would start with "You see Sir…" something I would mimic later in life whenever I was asked to explain. I would learn many years later that the narrator was the then popular actor/singer Tex Ritter--father of the late actor/comedian John "Three's Company" Ritter.

    Johnny de Leon would come back with his spiels then smoothly segue to one of many commercial breaks where Ngo-ngo-- Johnny de Leon's cleft-lipped sidekick, would do his "Bataan Matamis"  thing. It's interesting to note that in an industry where one's voice is the ticket to success, a novelty like Ngo-ngo could survive. Today where political correctness has gone overboard Ngo-ngo wouldn't even be on radio much less doing a cigarette ad. Ironically still, Ngo-ngo even recorded a song ("Hernando's Hideaway") and even made TV appearances later on. I remember Ngo-ngo as dark-skinned, slick black hair, short in stature, skinny and stands with a slight forward angle-- not exactly TV material either.

    There was no television then. No video games. Grandmother didn't even have a refrigerator. Instead she had this cabinet with screened doors where leftover food was stored precariously perched on a drinking glass standing on a saucer filled with water-- a precaution against ants, she would later tell me. No, there were no cockroaches. Never saw one. No mice or rats either. Grandmother told me that is so because she kept a sawa on the rafters. And, the resident tuko took care of the rest.

   Sometimes I would lie on my back and stare at the ceiling hoping to get a glimpse of the sawa. Nope, I never saw it. The tuko, on the other hand, guards its turf on the southwestern side of the house. You know it's there because he belts out, without fail, a guttural mating call right after the Angelus.