Maybe they are fulfilled that way

Let me quote Don Vicente Asperri: "The worst enemies of the poor are their own kind - because they are lazy, because they refuse to change."

I can say that I was sprung from the dungheap that was Tondo. Yes. I used to live in a squatter's area. Half of what I called home hang over a small creek that ebbed to the Pasig River. I came from humble beginnings (or not).

I'd like to claim this everytime I would like to attach to myself to the masses. I'd like to remember how I disdainfully played with Aling Feliza's grandchildren who lived across the street. These kids were always filthy, and they smelled strange even after they have taken a bath. But I welcomed their company - minus their boils and bruises, they were really nice people - as long as no soot and grime would stain my clothes. Mom always get angry when I soil my clothes.

When I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to stay out in the sun too long. Mom would always scold me when I sweat it out playing piko or patintero with the kids. I decided not to join some of the games like dampa or tumbang preso - I do not wear ordinary rubber slippers. I can't flip them or toss them in the air. I can't hold dirt!  I can't go barefoot! (No, I musn't!) The germs would reach my nails and I might get sick if they do!

I lived in Tondo. Somehow I belonged there during my childhood, but I knew and my playmates knew, that I was not of their kind. My dad had his car, we had our own air-conditioner, I have my own set of Barbie dolls. I went to a private Catholic school, I always looked good and smelled good. I lived in Tondo but I had it better than most of the kids my age then. I had never hungered the way other people have. I may have lived in the slums, but our house was not part of the slum area. I was class. I was sosyal. I was rich - at least richer than most of the kids around me. Sometimes I had asked myself why it was so.

Therefore, even back then, I can never properly associate myself with the mass of Tondo. I would never understand why most of them are reluctant to leave the slums, why they would resign and accept that poverty is something that they have to live with and live by. I would never understand why they had always accepted me as someone superior, if only because of my new slippers that I couldn't throw at some tin can.

Perhaps I was really lucky that I was taken in by people who seized opportunities to make their lives better. My parents, they weren't as poor as the common Tondo resident, but through hardwork and hard-earned money, we were able to buy a house of our own. A house of our own - away from the filthy and smelly slum area of Hermosa.

Every now and then, when I would happen to drop by Tondo, Aling Feliza's grandchildren would call me by my name, wave at me. I would smile and wave back. We used to be playmates.

A few years back, I remember handing them out their presents and I received thank-you's in return. All these years. I don't think they even bothered struggling with their chains. Don Vicente Asperri was perhaps right. There was no fight to begin with.