My Last Song Syndrome (LSS) is “Pearly Shells” which was the music for our batch’s dance number at Lourdes College High School’s (LCHS) “Jubilarians’ Night.”
If you were there watching us, please be informed that I attended only two practices. Some of our classmates had one practice. And for my other classmates, that performance was the first and one and only dance practice. So help us God.
Our batch mates, however, had several practices and were ready for that night.
I transferred from Naawan Elementary School to Lourdes College Grade School when I was in Grade 4. In other words, I had no Loyalty award. My only award was Best in Piano. I used to joke that meant I was as big as the grand pianos at the Lourdes College Auditorium. Haha. But I wasn’t fat then. The body weight began to increase only after college. Just add 100 to my current age then, and that was my weight in pounds.
By my late 30s, my body weight began to misbehave. Instead of the usual 100 plus current age, it morphed into 100 plus current age plus 10. Or plus 20. Or even plus 30. Juice colored. And that’s how it was until four years ago in January 2021 when my blood pressure misbehaved like sky was the limit. And so began my search for a healthy lifestyle that I could stick with forevermore.
Forevermore gyud? Good luck na lang to me.
Here I am now, trying so hard with the carnivore diet. Since LCHS had its alumni homecoming last week, it was a series of daily brunches and dinners from Wednesday up to Sunday. And the meals made my fats ask, Unsa gani ang carnivore diet? Hehe. I had to remind myself of the carbs’ side effects to avoid indulging in the frozen brazo with salted egg, ginataang bilo-bilo, and my most favorite halo-halo, and that was for the welcome dinner on the first day.
By Friday, I had “avoided” more carbs: cheesy ube halaya, mais con yelo, sizzling brownie ala mode, tropical fruit salad, Swiss croissant roll, cinnamon danish something (I forgot its complete “title”), the dough of the pizza, the thick toast that went with the Vienna sausages, and halo-halo again. I was building a pile of pizza dough again at that resto, leaving them uneaten on my plate. And that’s just for Friday.
On Saturday, I was “avoiding” the biko, puto cheese, puto ube, binaki, watermelon, sotanghon, crispy kangkong.
My chance at winning an award at the alumni homecoming, though, is not in the eating contest because there’s none. But there’s one for the Most Senior Award at the “Hali Na Mo.” For this year, there were three winners, from the 1963 and 1964 batches, who are 78 years old.
Batch 1968 was also there, represented by two batch mates, prompting the emcee to say, Wa sila kahimo ug group chat. Hehe.
The Jubilarians had the more attendance, of course, with our batch as the winner with 120 attendees.
Batch 1965 performed a chacha number. They’re this year’s diamond Jubilarians, that’s 60 years after high school.
Where will you be 60 years after your high school graduation? You should ask batch 1965 how the journey will be. But batch 2025’s journey will be different from that of batch 1965. Because of that little thing called generation gap.
