Wiry spaghetti

Netnet Camomot .

“SPAGHETTING pababa, pababa ng pababa.”

Not only “pababa,” but gone. Finally! It’s about time!

We used to live on the side of a street that had spaghetti wires. We’d look out the second-floor window for glimpses of the scenery through narrow slits in between the wires. Well, it wasn’t much of a scenery—traffic, drinks and drunks, a man holding a gun as his other arm was putting a teenage boy in a chokehold. That last one had me rushing to a landline, to call the police. Only to be told that the armed guy is a cop. Oh. Good to know.

Apparently, plainclothes police officers were assigned in the area as preventive measure against drunks who could, hmmm, “Igiling pababa, igiling pataas”? Still, learning about the cops’ presence did make me feel safe.

Cagayan de Oro’s streets can be divided into two: one side has the spaghetti wires; the other, none. Woe to the buildings and houses on the “wired” side.

The city itself can be divided into two: drinking and non-drinking.

Or how about this: malls and subdivisions, with one downtown neighborhood focused on the former, and the uptown area now filled with the latter.

Drinking, though, will always be here to stay. It’s an addiction even harder to control than drugs since alcohol is legal and available here, there and everywhere. Drugs, on the other hand, have to be procured surreptitiously, preferably with no plainclothes cops watching and policing. President Rody Duterte’s War on Drugs may not look like it’s making a dent, at least according to his detractors, but it has indeed “encouraged” and “inspired” drug addicts to stop or else…

I had written about all these before, can’t help rewind again. Tsk tsk.

The sad thing about addiction is it’s only replaced by something else, with drugs morphing into alcohol, alcohol morphing into food, food morphing into gambling, etc. All these may also happen at the same time. An addict needs professional help, to guide him in stopping the vicious cycle of addiction, rehab, addiction again, rehab again, ad nauseam.

Sometimes we have to give the government the benefit of the doubt, and trust that each of the choices it’s picking for the country is for the good of the madlang pehpohl. After all, the elected officials did have the most number of votes unless of course you’re vice presidentiable Bongbong Marcos who has been questioning Vice President Leni Robredo’s victory.

My maternal grandparents and parents were quiet during the Marcos years. They continued living life as it was, I didn’t even notice the difference between the free world and Martial Law because, well, I was too young to be aware. It was only in college that awareness popped overhead, thanks to a roommate who kept complaining about the fact that the Marcoses were always on the front pages of national broadsheets. But Bongbong was the crush ng bayan, and I was one of his fans, so, how could I complain? I’ve even kept his cover photo for Panorama, the Sunday magazine of Bulletin Today.

When the Marcoses were flown out of Malacanang in February 1986, and replaced by Tita Cory and the Aquinos, the Pinoys became hopeful for freedom to last. And it has. You can still post anti-Duterte musings on Facebook, right? So, it has.

I had this last-second—not last-minute—choice for president on May 9, 2016. My pen paused for a while, torn between my original choice—the one I was absolutely sure of for many months—and the other. And then, the 1986 People Power appeared in my minute brain and a fast-forward of events since then had an instant replay. Kind of…

“Do you know where you’re going to?

Do you like the things that life is showing you?

Where are you going to, do you know?”

And that made me choose the other.

It’s election time again next month. For the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan. Most probably, you’ll choose familiar names, unmindful of who they are and what they stand for. In case you’ve forgotten, the barangay captain and councilors are the people you run to when there’s trouble in the neighborhood. Aside from the police, that is. So, choose wisely. Are your preferred candidates approachable? Is generosity their second nature? Are they genuinely nice and law-abiding citizens? You cannot have fake people in your barangay hall. You need real ones there, barangay officials you can trust.

Managing a barangay is challenging, it cannot be managed from afar. To those who are willing to face that challenge, here’s an unsolicited hint: The foodie will always vote for the candidate whose preferred bribe is food. Spaghetti, anyone?