Boy Angas

I was disgusted by my writing. The words didn't flow freely, the hand didn't move an inch, and the mind had the creativity of a cadaver’s.

So I left my 'writing mode' -- sitting in front of the PC, fingers poised above the keyboard, eyes staring at the blank digital paper flashed on the monitor -- and went down to the living room.

By chance, a big-time, Las Vegas boxing match was playing on TV. The bout was furious and vicious. Oddly enough, I somehow imagined myself as a boxer pummeling his opponent. My foe was a collection of papers bunched together in the shape of man; credit my deprived my mind for that. He trash-talked me with phrases, “Write something, you fool!” or “CW 10! CW 10!” (I had a not-so-pleasant experience in my Creative Writing class, or CW10, last summer). I retaliated with a mighty arsenal of Pacquiao moves: left-hook, right-hook, uppercut, straight punch. Bam-bam-BAM!

Weird? I concur. That's why I said 'my deprived mind'.

But I couldn't knock-out my paper adversary. It was resilient, just like the two pugilists battling it out on TV. Neither one kissed the canvas. The match was in the tenth round, and the commentators still had it tied for both boxers.

The bell rang, marking the round's end. I snapped out of my bizarre reverie. Both pugs trudged to their corners with bloody and swelled faces. As commercials began to flood the TV screen, I looked out of the window beside the TV.

A child (let's call him 'Boy Angas') was making his way to the front of our miniature gate. At first, I thought he was going to buy ice from our maid (you know, those two-peso frozen blocks in plastic bags, thirty of which you could pack into a small freezer). Boy Angas was a suki, and when he bought he would yell in the loudest of voices his young throat could manage: “Bibili ako ng yelo! Yelo! Yelo! Yelo nga!” He wouldn't stop until someone showed up at the window and take his 'order'. And when someone did, even if that person was my father (who is a government official, proudly middle-class because he doesn't practice corruption), Boy Angas would talk to him disrespectfully. He didn't use po or opo, he spoke in bossy tones, he didn't use the word 'please', or the Pinoy equivalent of that (to illustrate: “Bibili ako ng yelo!” instead of “Pabili po ng yelo”).

At his young age -- I guess ten years -- Boy Angas was, well, a little too boastful for his own good, maangas so to speak. And that irritated me to no end.

And so when I saw him by our gate, I was determined to give him the cold shoulder, never mind the two pesos. But then he sat on the concrete sidewalk and began to rub his eyes, which I belatedly noticed to be wet, a little red, and slightly swollen. Boy Angas was crying!

I didn't know whether to be glad or sympathetic. I didn't like seeing people cry, but here was the bossy dude, king of Cordillera Street, emperor of yelo...in sorrow!

Boy Angas was sobbing as he rubbed his eyes. Picked upon by children bigger than his size? Possible. Received a monumental scolding and spanking from his parents? Who knows.

But as I heard the sounds of the boxing match return to the TV, Boy Angas stopped rubbing his eyes. He had stopped crying. He wiped his nose. He squared his shoulders in true maangas fashion. He let out an unreal, furious “Hah!”, then loped off to the street, vanishing from my sight. I think he didn't even see my observing him.

I was duly impressed. To think that when I was a child, I used to cry for an hour, until the tears dried up or I fell asleep! Truth be told, how ill mannered he might have been, Boy Angas was also Boy Astig. The kid had come in crying, but after a minute, he left with a smirk plastered on his face.

Somehow, his brief act stirred something within me.

I suddenly felt that I needed to overcome my own adversary, that I needed to knock-out the paper boxer who was cadillacing around the ring's mat, trash-talking me, waiting to be thrown down. Crying and writing are two different things, but my deprived mind seemed to find a thin string that connected both. As the saying goes, “Fight your own dragon.”

And so I turned off the TV, never bothering to finish the match. I had a bout of my own to decide. I went up to my room, returned to writing mode, and buckled down to work.