Influenced To Make A Difference

by Yas Jayson Saturday, September 15, 2007 1 palagay

[This was my first attempt to pas a literary work in a newspaper....Until now, I do not have even a single clue what happened in my entry...(Sigh.) Time will come.]

Every time I see the small green book by Bob Ong in one of the shelves in my favorite bookstore here in Katipunan, I can’t just but simply grin and whisper a laugh as I remember how it touched and tickled me when I was in high school. I’m sure anyone who gets a chance to read it will irresistibly laugh as I did and will remember their own school blues. But beside its rich humor, one would see some kind of inspiration- the tall tales about a teacher’s prowess to affect eternity.
Then I remember something.
I am a fresh product of a public high school. Just about a year ago and I was a senior high school student then. And it was the first day of class. Usually first day of school is a day of hellos, kamustahan and loud storytellings. Our room is at the fourth level of the seniors’ hall and you can see by the window the buildings of Katipunan and the LRT trains passing every fifteen minutes. We are in the middle of our loud chuckles and proud narratives when all of a sudden a small, straight woman in her early 40’s wearing a violent yellow public school teacher’s uniform, a serious face matched by her short hair entered our room. At the first glace to her, you would instantly fall into silence.
She is known to my Alma Mater as a prominent and effective and valiant teacher. She teaches Economics and she loves using red pens. She walks fast as if she always has an appointment with the principal or with her department head or with anyone else in the school campus. She owns a loud and lucid voice that you will not wish to be shouted at. You could easily find her for everyone in the school knows and fears her name.
I don’t know what’s in her name or if it was tabooed and you should give her a pseudonym She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. I suppose Ms. Perjes has an atmosphere to be esteemed she inherited from her homo sapiens ancestors.
Our class with her starts after our short lunch breaks due to our always extending Physics class. She comes to our class promptly ready to explain the theories of needs and wants, the basic of taxations, the relationship between producer and consumer, the evolution of economic systems, the history of trade and if Thomas Malthus was really born on a full moon while Adam Smith was a werewolf. I thought she was the type of teacher that does not know the values of smiling and its medical claims but I was wrong. She laughs over simple things and to her own mistakes with a mouth open enough to see her tonsil. Her nerves never failed to make us laugh. My perception of a straight and never smiling teacher turned to a great and cool educator. She was the only teacher we never dared to sleep on classes, the last thing that you will do if you are in a hurry to be slapped in the face with your red-ink filled report card. You will never get tired of listening to her as her words seem to point always at you.
I also realized that it was not only me whom she enthralled. Our class’ gang of girls who preferred to sit on our canteen tables or under the batibot tree benches while putting on make-ups and face powder than answering their Physics manual would be seen sitting attentively two rows from the front. The boys who have a daily ritual of either talking whether who amongst them made the winning shot in their last match with the other section or who was the “patalo” in their last game in the DOTA tournament could be seen at least a chair away from the each other taking notes and raising questions. She simply stuns us all. In my twelve years of school life meeting at least less than fifty teachers, I haven’t seen someone like her.
Days passed and I had enough of basic things to know in her subject. It was only a month away to a senior’s most anticipated and most feared moment- graduation day. One familiar breezy Wednesday noon, after an early lunch break (a very unusual event in the history of my senior high life) as usual, Ms. Perjes came to our room. She has no lesson to teach us for she had finished discussing to us the coverage of the curriculum early. She just talked with us. Just a motherly conversation. I knew it was the last day of class with her. It is always a task of every subject teachers to ask us and give us some advice in pursuing our chosen carriers whenever the graduation day approaches. Then that was the time, for the first time, I heard my classmates talking about their top secret dreams. We had a little narration of our dreams. Many of my classmates said they want to be nurses someday (actually, it is the popular carrier up to nowadays. Out of my fifty four classmates, more or less 20 of them are now taking nursing.) Some wants to become engineers and seafarers. Others desire to become programmers and technicians. Others said they want to become teachers. Carlo, my militant classmate and friend dreams of becoming a NPA someday (the most outrageous dream one can ever heard.) He is now taking political economics at PUP. Roma, my best friend wants to become an international relation officer. Jerome pursues his dream of becoming a statistician, Rochelle as a psychologist.
I never got the chance to have my turn to recite about my dream. In fact, I was still then uncertain of what should I take. I regret because it was the last time we will meet as teacher and student. After graduation, things will never be the same again. We want to thank her but she quickly left us. We never had the chance to say thank you to her. To give her some words of praise. I supposed Ms. Perjes don’t want to be seen crying. I’ve known her during those ten months of sitting in her classes. She’s a brave woman that doesn’t want to be looked at when crying. She’s sometimes mental of some sort. She laughs exaggeratedly but I have never seen her sob. Or even pulling out her pink flowery hanky to wipe her teary placid face. She had never ceased to inculcate to us the value of one’s capacity to make a difference. That no one is up to no good. That anyone is significant regardless someone’s limitation, inabilities and flosses.
Landing from our stage festooned in maroon and silver motifs, after exchanging numerous handshakes wide smile almost locking my jaw with the mayor, congressman, councilors, and several not so very important guests of the night, I saw Ms. Perjes in a distance. She was sitting in one of the queue of chairs intended for teachers. She was in her remarkably black and white dress with her short hair set beautifully by spray nets and half dozens of hair pins. With my diploma in my sweaty left hand, I reached for her ready hands to congratulate me. I was not able to say words to her. I just stared at her motherly face, thanking her mentally. I also hugged my mother then after the practiced exit, I enjoined my classmates in throwing up our togas high up in the starry sky as if the stars would catch them and grant our wishes.
Tonight, I am alone in my recollections staring at the distant stars thinking of that fifty three young people I have shared a windy classroom last year and the Economics teacher who told us anyone can do great things. I am thinking about those fifty three individuals who once joined me in weaving childish dreams while looking at the dusty window grill arguing whether a big piece of cloud is an elephant or the face of our class adviser. Where are they now? I know a little. I have made up my choice. Few knows what I am doing know or where I am. My Mama and Papa agreed with me after few troubles. Call me lunatic or moonstruck, I chose priesthood. I have just realized that I love missions and I taught of pursuing it.

Sitting on a swing with a tattered copy of that green book by Bob Ong which I do not own but belong to a highschool friend, I am reminiscing those times when I first encountered that small, straight woman wearing a violent yellow public school teacher’s uniform, a serious face matched by her short hair in that windy untidy classroom once I considered my home.
I wrote these things for two reasons. First is to talk about a book which stuck me at the first peek and; Second, to thank people who influenced me so much. I want to thank teachers whom I shared my failures, my astig moments and my every small attempts in climbing heights of life. To my Mama and Papa, my first teachers who did not waver to understand me, my insanities and my madness. And to She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, who made young minds’ outlook in life more magical.
She did not know that I wrote about her. She didn’t even know that she influenced me so great.
Each one has his own favorite teacher. Teachers may come in different sizes, forms and places. The fact is that they taught you something lasting.
A teacher affects eternity. You’ll never know where her influence stops. (#30)
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