JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Blame it on the Mee Grob. I wanted something different from my usual lunch so I ordered the mee grob. Didn’t realize there was so much tofu in it and I hate tofu. There I was trying to avoid the tofu in the noodles when there was a sudden blast of noise.

Someone was playing Air Supply in my presence.

I would rather hear an orchestra of flatulent trolls farting the complete discography of Paula Abdul than hear anything by Air Supply. That noise polluter had to be eradicated. I looked around to see the source of the horror—it was emanating from one of the cars displayed in the hallway. A salesperson had gotten into the car, turned up the radio, and was headbanging to an Air Supply song. How it is possible to headbang to Air Supply I have no idea, but this person was doing it and he seemed extremely pleased with himself.

I sat there chewing crispy noodles, thinking, Maybe it’ll stop. It didn’t. Do I live and let live? Do I sit idly by while this creature vaporizes all unprotected brains within a 1-km radius? Will I allow this troglodyte to unleash this atrocity on the entire populace? Hell no!

I went up to the sales staff and said, “Could you turn that down. Nakakairita.” It was couched as a request, but it clearly did not end in a question mark or offer the possibility of a negative answer. Use The Voice.

Instantly, silence.

In employing The Voice I took inspiration from Armida Siguion Reyna, whom I’d run into a half-hour earlier. She must be pushing 80 and she looks terrific. She was wearing an ornate metallic headband low on her forehead. “Tita Midz,” I said, “What a lovely headband.” She said, “Masakit lang minsan kung mali ang kapit.” (It hurts sometimes when it’s put on the wrong way.)

We all have our favorite Armida stories. If you type her name using predictive spelling, the program tries to change the spelling to “Armada”, which is also correct. I once saw her on a talk show where the host said, “Tita Midz, you look so young! What’s your secret?” She quickly replied, “Nagpa-facelift ako.”

Tita Midz is the master at not taking guff from anyone. There’s the story of the immigration official who asked her, “Why do you come to New York every six months?” Her riposte: “Because I’m rich.”

You and your friends are going to the movies. You’re already at the mall, so you decide to buy the tickets right there instead of getting them online.

You line up at the box-office. The next screening of the movie you want to see starts in twenty minutes, but there’s just one couple ahead of you in the queue, so there should be no problem.

That’s what you think.

They’re clinging tightly to each other like survivors of a shipwreck washed up on an island and surrounded by predators waiting to snatch their precious mates, but that’s none of your business.

When the ticket-seller asks them which movie they intend to see, they respond by asking her what movies are showing. The marquee is in their faces and there are posters marked “Now Showing” in the lobby, but apparently these unfortunate people never learned to read. The ticket-seller rattles off the titles of the movies. They ask her to repeat them. Then they ask her who’s starring in each movie, and what the movie is about. They discuss the movies among themselves, including reviews they’ve read on the Internet, and the opinions expressed by people who have seen the movies.

This takes five minutes. You can fidget and clear your throat all you want, but they will not be moved.

Finally they reach a decision as to which movie they will see. Oh, happy day! Now you can get your tickets…

They look at the screening schedules and confer as to which time would be most convenient for them. What about the 4pm, he asks. I want to go shopping first, she replies. But we’re expected at 7pm, he reminds her. They discuss their mealtimes, weekend itineraries, shopping lists and so on. It is way more information than the ticket-seller or you, the hapless people in line behind them, can possibly need.

You are losing your patience, but you restrain yourself; you politely mention to them that your movie is about to start and suggest that they either pick up the pace or allow you to get your tickets while they are mulling over their new proof of Fermat’s theorem. If they heard you, they give no indication; their total lack of consideration for other humans (plus monstrous sense of entitlement) protects them like a force field. In the end they do what indecisive twerps have done through the ages. They call her mother and make her choose the time. Calloo, callay!

Now comes the real challenge: selecting the seats. They look at the diagram on the screen, then refer to the printed version, but their faces are void of comprehension. They may as well be taking a calculus exam. Which side is the screen on again? Do the X’s mean the seats are taken or not? She wants a seat in the back because she gets headaches at the movies, but he’s forgotten his glasses so he needs to sit close to the screen…

A millisecond before you go Christian Bale on them, they conclude the transaction and wander off to the refreshments stand, where they will infuriate several dozen more people. You and your friends get to your movie ten seconds into the opening credits. You have missed the trailers.

From Cracked: The Eight Customers Everyone Hates.

You’re walking into the mall. You stop at the guard’s desk for the obligatory security check. You know and he knows and everybody knows that this is part-pantomime and part-placebo, because even supposing you had a bomb in your possession, it is highly unlikely that the guard would identify it as such (Maybe if it were a large round ball with a fuse sticking out like in Road Runner cartoons). Weren’t there bag inspections as usual the day that Glorietta 2 blew up? 

So you’re doing your role in the pantomime when someone literally walks into you, treading on your jeans. It’s a woman so preoccupied with texting that she doesn’t look where she’s going. She says “Ay!” and keeps on walking. She does not say “Excuse me” or “Sorry”. It is as if you are invisible. Ordinarily you would let it go, forget about it. You put up with so much aggravation in this city, you hardly even notice it anymore. In fact, you’re so accustomed to dealing with rude, uncouth behavior that when people do exhibit good manners, you do a double-take. Every time someone says “Sorry” or “Excuse me” or “Walang anuman”, you feel like saying, “Thank you.” 

Today you do not feel like putting up with other people’s shit. Today you refuse to be invisible. You walk slowly behind the woman who had crashed into you. You observe that she is wearing flip-flops and an anklet. She is still texting, oblivious to her surroundings. You calculate her pace. At the right second, you step on the back of her flip-flop, sending her sprawling. “Oh I’m sorry,” you say sweetly, and walk away. Someday, while texting, she may walk into an open manhole and disappear forever.

A few months ago I wrote a piece on the pre-Hispanic gold exhibition at the Ayala Museum. I viewed the collection three times in the course of the writing, and I always brought my very large shoulder bag. After the article came out in Newsweek, the museum director sent me a nice note with complimentary tickets to the museum enclosed. (The entrance fee, including the Crossroads of Civilizations exhibition, is P450.)

Yesterday I had lunch with my friend Ligaya, who is visiting from Paris. Since we were near the museum, I suggested we look at the old gold. We used the second-floor entrance, handed in the comp tickets, and signed the visitor book. The very polite staff told us we had to deposit our bags at the lobby. Ligaya did not want to leave her bag as it contained all her travel documents. I figured the guards would let us bring our bags; if they were suspicious, they could assign one of their number to follow us around, since there were more guards than visitors on Sunday afternoon.

We took the elevator to the fourth floor and walked into the exhibition hall. The guard let us in. We were already looking at a display of very large earrings when another guard approached and brusquely announced that we had to leave our bags in the lobby. “Sinabi nang iwan yung bag, e,” he said. It was not the content that ticked me off, it was the tone. Another guard said, “Complimentary tickets pala.”

One, I do not allow myself to be scolded by security guards. Two, whether the tickets were free or not, all museum visitors are entitled to common courtesy.

As a rule I no longer argue with security guards. It is clear we do not understand each other. So Ligaya and I went down to the lobby, explained to the desk staff that we did not want to leave our bags, and asked them to return our tickets. Which they did, politely and without fuss. Then I texted one of the museum managers and told her what happened. She apologized and said the No Bags policy started after an accident involving a large bag in the porcelain exhibition. She said they were putting in lockers so visitors would feel safe about leaving their things. That’s nice. But, see, the people in charge are always polite. The people who actually have to face the public act like we’re trespassing on their property. I would prefer not to be treated like a terrorist.

I take taxis everyday, and I’ve been wondering: What is the net effect on the drivers’ and passengers’ mental health of constant unabated exposure to radio content, including

a. News of the day, 95% of it bad, the other 4% horrific
b. Angry commentators fulminating about the news of the day, with the inevitable conclusion that nothing ever changes in this country
c. Callers relating their sad encounters with official corruption, venality and ineptitude, leading to the inevitable conclusion that everyone is “gago”
d. Bad pop and worse bossa nova
e. Unfunny jokes and tag lines delivered by announcers who seem to think that screaming makes everything funnier
f. Maudlin, hysterical drama serials about desperate, unhappy, desperately unhappy people with no hope
g. The needy making appeals for help to the general public because they have no one else to turn to
h. Do they still have that AM show where the relatives of OFWs can call their provider in a foreign country and ask why their remittance hasn’t arrived or is late or is not enough to cover their needs especially since someone in the family is pregnant again?

I don’t believe in the true-good-beautiful best-foot-forward approach and pretending everything is peachy when it’s not, but shouldn’t there be a limit to the amount of horror and torment that we passively absorb from the airwaves? What about some perspective? Programmers will argue that the public deserves to hear the truth, but I’m beginning to suspect a campaign to make us run amuck.

So 3-year-old Pemberley Darcy was welcomed into Zaida’s household. He was a surly child, full of dark looks, and when he was admonished about his behavior, he would engage the speaker in a staring contest. Zaida reminded everyone to be kind to the boy; after all he’d been through, of course he would be distrustful of people. He’d been traumatized, but in time, if treated well, he would get over it.

One day Zaido’s assistant reminded Pemberley to say “po” and “opo” when addressing adults. Pemberley glared at him and yelled, “Putanginamo!” He repeated it several times. This incident was reported to Zaida, who took the 3-year-old aside and explained why he should not say that. In response, Pemberley Darcy mimed a gun with his thumb and two fingers, pressed it against Zaida’s forehead, and said, “Bang!”

“I suddenly thought of the characters in City of God,” Zaida recalls, “Except that those boys were 9 or 11, and this one was 3 years old.”

“Baka pag 5 years old runner na yan ng shabu (He’ll be running drugs by age 5),” Zaida’s friend said. He was not entirely kidding.

“Maybe he’s not really 3 years old,” someone else said, “He’s 15 but looks 3 due to malnutrition.”

Then Zaida’s 7-month-old baby began to look at her piteously, as if he were trying to tell her something.