FUNNY INCIDENTS IN MY TOWN AND THE WORDS' GOD FORBID

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

While quaffing brandy last week with these guys in a barrio at a Cotabato town, I asked the name of this ex- air force sergeant (2nd from left). He said Erning Dolero.

"Are you related to the late Monggo Bolero?

The group was amused by my play of words and became nostalgic because Monggo - either a sexagenarian or septuagenarian (60 to 70 years old) if he is alived today was the gang mate of Turing Almario (extreme left) and the older brother Ponso of retired Captain Jerry Reyes (2nd from right).

They were the average height Filipino basketball stars of our college beating even those 6 to 7 - footer American missionaries from Texas one memorable day at Mlang public court in the early 1980s.

These sexa or septua were the school's bugoy (rogues) that I relished their exchanges almost every dusk and night while they wait for their evening classes at a Protestant's college. Our house was just around the corner and without a television to boot, I - still in elementary and highschool - entertained myself listening to these college guys banter and tease with each other.

I guffawed whenever the funny face Minggoy Eulatic - former Kap of the once Communist infested village's Pulanglupa - cracked a joke and unleased his infectious laughter to someone's joke.

I remembered even today their spinster (laon o matandang dalaga) Professor Miss Guaran who asked the class: Have any of you guys saw personally a dinosaur? Nobody raise a hand except Monggo.

"Really Monggo, you have seen a dinosaur, where?" Posed to him by the old maid in the Riverside Hall's building that was built in the bank of the then pristine Mlang River.

"In this class Ma'am, he is my seatmate," An intoxicated Monngo pointed to an embarrassed Minggoy - who if he is still alive today can be a good poster boy of the third sequel of the Jurassic Park's movie because of his archaic face, hahaha! The dinosaur joke brought the house down that could still give me a chuckle while writing this anecdote on my Android phone

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In our meeting last Tuesday over a Fundador and a case of San Miguel Beer, I told them how awed I was with Monggo when I saw he could not only write a column but was the Editor-in- Chief of the college paper.

Damn, this guy is cool. He is a bad boy but he is intelligent," I told myself

"Naga sulat siya sa Inglis sang ndi maayo nga matabo sa lugar ta kag gin tapos niya sa two words nga may exclamation point "God forbid!" (He wrote his op-ed article in English about the doom that await our community and ended it with the two words with exclamation point's"God forbid!".

As an unsophisticated early highschool lad in Shakespearean English, I was very curious about the "God forbid" phrase Mongo wrote since what my tender mind knew then was "the Kawayan Bed" in our shack". "Sanamagan ! They rhyme with Monggo's last two words, I quipped.

"Curios about that "God Forbid" I opened my mother's thick Webster Dictionary given to her by an American President (Dr. Ricketson) of a Baptist Seminary in Baguio City and saw the meaning of that two effin' words. The phrase means: One hopes a bad thing will not happen.