ARE you the type that wakes up on a Monday morning with a sunny face, the kind that resembles the sun emoji? Smiling brightly, ready for work, and looking forward to another week at the office? Good for you.

Most people would rather stay in bed for a while, trying so hard not to check out Facebook as they contemplate where the weekend went or did it even happen. “Time flies when you’re having fun,” as the saying goes. But did they have fun? If the hangover is keeping them from remembering how the weekend was, they should treat the hangover as a hint that they did have fun.

There are people who get drunk after a bucket of beer. There are people who get drunk after mixing drinks—tequila, vodka, whiskey, rum, beer. There are people who never get drunk because they don’t drink. Who among these three groups is having the most fun?

I have a friend who doesn’t drink at all but she’s the most fun person to be with. She’s so funny, she’s the life of the party, she’s a great dancer—people who don’t know her would probably say she’s drunk. But she’s not. Which proves that you don’t need alcohol to be happy.

Another friend preferred coffee while we were drinking the night away. He was also funny, again proving that alcohol is not essential in acquiring a sense of humor.

Alcohol doesn’t always have the same effect as age. Haven’t you noticed that grumpy people become grumpier when they’re older? But alcohol may have the opposite result: the grumpy morphing into happy as they dance the night away. So, if you have an old-ish irritable friend who’s constantly complaining, gossiping, and looking at the other side of the fence, give her tequila. Let’s see—pronounced as that Spanish word for milk—if that will make her happy at last. Because I gotta feeling all she needs is love—in the form of tequila.

By the way, my sense of humor never goes away. It stays with the person who’s lucky enough to have that as his shield against life’s tribulations.

It’s Marites’ sense of rumor that should go away. This is so unfair to anyone named Marites which is short for “Mare, ano ang latest?” The latest rumor, that is.

Urban Dictionary defines “rumor” as a “piece of false, slanderous and/or mean-spirited story that somebody tells about someone else. These stories are usually told because the victim of the rumor is smarter, more popular, wealthier, more successful, harder working, or nicer than the person who is spreading the rumor. Said rumor spreader often spreads rumors because he has become jealous and wants to hurt the person who he is spreading a rumor about.”

Thanks to that definition, Urban Dictionary is now my favorite dictionary. Haha.

We used to dance to Bananarama’s “I Heard a Rumour” way back in the ‘80s. Makati even had a Rumors Disco then. Those were the pa-cute days on the dance floor, sort of leveling up from the barrio’s bayle. And then, there was the morning after—good luck na lang with the hangover.