i relish life’s little surprises.
they give me a full-blown thrill for being caught off-guard and unraveling the truest “me” without inhibitions. furthermore, i derive pleasure from these unpredictable moments which are likewise deliverer of welcome vicissitudes in my life.
it is for this reason that the unexpected visit of four of my high school batchmates/friends last saturday, november 23, had me undergoing these rapturous feelings again.
thanks to imelda dado-moratillo, with her ala-secret service agent style of keeping the information from me that it’s not only joemil mujar (joy, another batchmate) who would be with her, my mundane saturday turned supraspecial. 
looking like a kid who had just been handed the gift she had long wished for, i could not believe that analyn lopera-carasco (ana), gina martinez-bruno (jing), agnes mapa-jayme (nes), and eduardo conda jr. (don) would go all the way (and even lost their way! ha-ha!) from the north (bulacan and quezon city) to accompany dadz (bru to me) to pick up the donations for our batch’s yolanda fundraising project and visit me in las pinas city. what touched me even more was knowing that jing and don went on a half-day leave from their work just to be present in our snap mini reunion. completing the number of “attendees” was of course joemil, who was still finding his way to our residence. 
with a simple early dinner to partake, we did not waste any time exchanging stories, most of which had already been shared in our previous rare meetings. and as always, we would laugh our hearts out as if we were still high schoolers.
one of the best parts though of this get-together was our tongue gymnastics in speaking bikol daraga, our first language. all of us originally hailed from daraga town; however, we are also fluent speakers of the bikol legazpi/albay dialect. fearing our L1 to be a dead language in our household in the near future (jing, ana, nes, and i are married to non-bicolanos), we had to recall some of the words which i mentioned in one of my articles at https://wanderingjouster.com/2012/10/05/sputing-alimantak-atbp/. the mere sound of these words which seemed taboo to be uttered when we were young made me suddenly miss the town where i spent majority of my childhood. with this remembrance was our knowing pieces of information which made me wonder why despite living in the same vicinity, fate did not will it for us to be playmates.
our chatter continued on but would have ended soonest if the plan to visit three of our batchmates who live nearby pushed through. unluckily, the time was uncooperative. as a result, my visitors decided on something which brought me to another level of ecstasy – sleeping over in our humble abode.
immediately, i prepared the spare room which could accommodate all of us. oh, yes. i joined them lest i would be their next topic. hahahahaha. you know, it has been a joke in our batch that whoever is not around in a gathering he/she becomes at the mercy of those who are present. meaning, you can be the center of the hot discussion!
a first for me to be sleeping with my high school friends who didn’t possess an iota of finickiness and pretension, it made me not notice that we actually ceased talking at 3:30 in the morning and finally gave in to sleepiness! then, while i was dozing off, the sound of wheezing began which actually became music to my ears as i realized that my “bedmates” were already having a deep slumber. 
at around 5:00 a.m. my body clock was turned on. i woke up and found that all my sons were already awake and ready to be driven to golezeum 16. lancelot reminded me at once about our sked at classic homes that sunday morning (see related post at https://wanderingjouster.com/2013/11/25/my-mornings-wandering-to-wondering/). i assured him that i hadn’t forgotten it. uttering a short explanation, they all understood when i told them that it had to be delayed for a few minutes because we had our visitors.
so when my six friends (joy made it to our place and slept in his own van parked in front of our house) finished their light breakfast at around 7 a.m., my three sons were already raring to leave for their basketball game while i had to join the group photo-op first before “thank you’s” and “goodbye’s” were exchanged.
posing for our lensman, knight, nobody could tell that we all lacked sleep. 🙂
friends, here are the faces of seven individuals who have weathered the storms of life. we are all privileged to share the same road as each of us continue to exist and cherish what we call TRUE FRIENDSHIP and BROTHERHOOD.
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