I’VE reached that age where my usual response to an urgent request is kind of, Let’s calm down, inhale, exhale, what was it again?

I wonder if Cagayan de Oro’s city hall has also adopted that kind of response as its SOP — standard operating procedure — in managing the city, but with the slowest speed: Let’s calm down, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, repeat a million times. And then goes into denial mode: Is there a problem? As it fails to smell the garbage through its constant inhale-exhale repeats.

“Denial is not just a river in Egypt,” as the saying goes.

But since city hall now has new garbage trucks, perhaps it’s not in denial after all.

For a while there, it did seem like city hall was waiting for worst-case scenarios to happen, such as CDO running out of space for uncollected garbage, thus, forcing a mountain of garbage to float above the city until it all comes back down, no thanks to gravity, and falls down on top of city hall.

Impossible? Oh. Go watch “Tron: Ares” to see how the impossible could become possible.

Watching “Tron: Ares” was like listening to EDM — electronic dance music. I almost danced inside the cinema. Its soundtrack reminded me of bar-hopping days in Manhattan where some guys might have had an Ecstasy or two and that’s why they were dancing like, hmmm, the way Ares would have danced had that been part of his program.

“Tron: Ares” is the EDM version of “F1,” which remains as my most favorite movie this year and it’s not only because “F1” has Brad Pitt.

If “Tron: Ares” and “F1” were merged as one, it could be the movie of the century. Okay. Of the decade. Or perhaps I’m simply having selective amnesia by forgetting all the other movies I watched this year, thanks to my EDM euphoria.

I love EDM because it reminds me only of better days inside bars. All that noise I couldn’t escape from while having the tequila ritual: salt, tequila, orange slice. Hic. And dancing the night away.

If I were to indulge in that nowadays at my age, the hangover would last for three days.

The only drink I can have now is water. And it has to be bottled water when eating out, no thanks to CDO’s gastroenteritis scare. Which brings me back to my gastroenteritis episodes in 1987 and 2004 that I did see as the worst that could happen then.

But be careful with what we think is the worst thing that can happen. Because most probably it’s not. Still, life does prepare us for worst-case scenarios which we will hopefully be able to deal with.

But CDO’s current scenarios should be dealt with before they can reach worst-case levels. The gastroenteritis scare was merely a symptom of the city’s woes.

There are people who don’t eat kinilaw and dinuguan at restos and at parties outside of their house. The Cagayanon could finally understand why.