Grade 4 – St. John (1983-84)

I think I am not wrong in saying that it was a significant year for most of us. My classmates, almost all of whom are on facebook now expect for maybe Gaudelia Escuadro, Carmina Sarmiento, and the one most important to me, R.M., can easily correct me by maybe writing down their own memories, but, it is just how I remember that year. Something was afoot. It was, looking back now, something great, something momentous was happening or was about to happen. I ask myself, as others may also ask, on what am I basing this assumption. Is this not just a case of confirmation bias? Maybe so, but you know what I am basing this on? Memory. Not just mine, but my classmates too. We are all in our 40s now. Some may deny it, but I want to grow old gracefully so I am not. And given this age, we have or, at least, I have, the most memories of that year. Like, given a lifetime, one looks back and see clouds and the general feeling of nostalgia and among those clouds, there are faces, events, and feelings that are so concrete, one can just hold them? That is school year 1983-1984 for me.

Christmas Party (December 1983) c Philip John Perez

Maybe it helped that Ninoy Aquino was assassinated on August of that year. That event was historically important to the Philippines.  And us, who are martial law babies, were just transformed. Look at our class picture just four months after the assassination.  We are already flashing the “Laban” sign of the opposition. I am sure that we did not understand what was happening, except that something bad had been. Things just mothballed after that because less than three years after, when we were about to graduate from Grade 6, the People Power Revolution happened.