eto, kuha don sa isang essay ko para sa eng1 nung 1st year, 1st sem. hehe. naalala ko lang dahil don sa sinagutan kong HS survey kanina.

nga pala, nairaos ko na ang econ. relatively, mas madali siya. pero kamtutinkopit, yan din ang sinabi ko dati at pasang-awa lang ako. hemmingway, eto na…

I couldn’t forget the laugh trips I shared with my friends. When I was in fifth grade (I was 11 at that time), my two other friends and I occupied the three seats at the center of the first row during our English class. We were having our listening test that afternoon and I was trying to enjoy our professor’s short story.

There were to Chinese brothers stranded inside a building because of an earthquake. Both of them tried to survive the shocking tremor. They were too young to be experiencing that and they were too innocent to be in such a disaster. They comforted each other, thinking that they could escape fear if they did so. They held on to each other, waiting for rescue. The structures around the two boys were already collapsing slowly. Panic and fear ran across their innocent minds. And then, a horrible thing happened—shocking, although expected. The wall closest to one of the boys collapsed! The child might have been to stunned to speak and call for help. His brother was there, alright, but what can a little child do to protect and help his brother from the falling debris? They other boy then decided to leave his brother for a while to call for help. The other child stayed there, beneath the remains of what has been a wall, waiting for his brother to return.

After several minutes, the other child returned to the site, along rescue people. What they found there was no longer a building—nothing close to what it looked like before. A pile of broken bricks seemed to cry before their eyes. The child tried to hold his tears and just helped the rescuers get his brother out of the debris. After several more minutes, a little hand brought hope to their eyes. It was the other child. The rescuers immediately made way for the little one to get out, and finally, they were able to retrieve the boy’s body. Right. The boy’s body—only his lifeless body. That was the time when his brother broke into tears.

The boy broke into tears—and so did our professor. She paused for a while and just stared at the copy of the mimeographed sheet of paper she was holding. Trying to minimize the muffling sounds she made, our professor put her index and middle fingers on her mouth. Then the whole class saw her teary-eyed. The story definitely moved her.

A few moments passed and the three of us occupying the front seats began giggling. Discreet giggles then burst into boisterous guffaws! The three of us just looked at our prof and continued laughing carelessly. She paused again, and in a tone half-saddened and half-trying to make us feel guilty, she said, “Mga wala kayong puso!!!”

That was it. The whole class then broke into laughter!