1:00 p.m.
Afternoon classes are like being in a state of limbo. We’re still sleepy and splashing water on our faces simply couldn’t wash it off.
What’s more is that these classes often feel like an unnecessary intermission to something far more important. I still feel the same way as I write this, so I’ll play hooky and fast forward to a few minutes before four o’clock.
3:58 p.m.
There’s an air of quiet restlessness as teachers wrap up the last class of the day. Last-minute instructions, assignments, and maybe a parting sermon if the class were particularly unruly that afternoon only add to our growing agitation. But we’ve long stopped listening. Their voices have already faded into the background as ears wait for the sound of the creaking staircase followed by the pealing of the seminary bell at 4:00 p.m.
And then, pandemonium.
One by one, we strip ourselves of our school uniforms to reveal our basketball uniforms underneath. We then open our study tables and take out our sneakers that we’ve stashed there earlier in the day, put them on and go on a mad dash to the basketball court.
We’re a special class of seminarians called the buwaya, member of Kingdom Animalia and phylum Chordata whose sole purpose is to be among the first 10 players to play basketball during the recreation period.
Becoming a buwaya who’s consistently the king of the hill and at the top of the heap is no mean feat. It takes cunning, speed, and a superhuman ability to change clothes in a flash to become one.
In our class, Nick has always been the Alpha Buwaya. He always had something more that pretenders like myself didn’t. He wasn’t just quick and cunning, but he was also supremely athletic.
He was Zion Williamson before Zion was even a twinkle in his father’s eye. Nick combined height, heft, and agility to put each one in our class to shame in a one-on-one game. I know this from experience because I was almost always matched up against him whenever we played, but only because we’re the same height, nothing more. Once he took the first step to the baseline and bumped his body against my skinny frame, he was almost always going to score.
While Nick wasn’t much fun as an opponent, it was a joy being his teammate. We played together for two years in the high school varsity—I was a benchwarmer who was only there for the height and occasional shooting—and it was great having someone you can depend on when it came to scoring.
Of course, there were buwayas too in our class aside from him. Lex was a gifted guard and shooter, D’Arcy was a fearless dude who loved cutting in the middle of the lane and throwing crazy floaters before they became a thing, Ike who’s probably the most well-rounded player in our batch, Percival who ran so quickly from one end of the court to the other that we called him Kabayo or Horse, and Henrik who’s a great ball handler and shooter with whom I loved playing pick-and-roll plays like John Stockton and Karl Malone.
But it’s all in the past now. Only a few of us would be able to play an entire game without passing out.
We also had this obsession with our vertical leap. We tried our hardest to jump as high as we could to reach the backboard before, during, and after playing basketball. Those who could jump higher or had a longer wingspan were able to reach the bottom of the rim or even the rim itself. And this fixation on our vertical bled into other places outside the basketball court. We’d try to reach the tops of doorways in the chapel, dormitory, refectory, classrooms, and practically every entrance in the seminary that’s within reach. This obsession never seemed to have left me. I may not play basketball that much anymore, but there are times when I still dream vividly about being able to finally dunk the ball. And yes, I still tap tops of doorways every so often.
We only had two basketball courts: the junior court was reserved for freshmen and those in second year while the senior court was a larger one where the ones in third year and the seniors would play. And on each weekday, only one class was allowed to play at their assigned court. So if you were a freshman and it was the second year guys’ turn to play that day, you had to find other stuff to do. Some of us would lounge at the lobby or the refectory, watch others play basketball, debate about basketball (who’s the better player, Bong Ravena or Kobe Bryant?), or get the guitar and play music. Others played tennis, table tennis, and football. One of my classmates, Coco, even played tennis at the national level in elementary.
Overall though, recreation was when we could let off steam and bring balance to a life of prayer and studies. It was the embodiment of probably one of our most favorite overused Latin phrases: mens sana in corpore sano, or a healthy mind in a healthy body. It stresses the importance of exercise in a person’s mental health. But getting a lot of exercise didn’t keep us from being our usual crazy selves, especially when there were girls around.
Some afternoons, a tricycle would drive by the basketball court full of high school girls wearing the blue and white uniform of St. Joseph’s College, a private school in Borongan. This would instantly bring the level of competition into overdrive, with each of us suddenly unwilling to pass the ball so we could showcase our individual skills. The basketball court must have reeked of hormones then with the particularly unhealthy amounts of adrenaline, testosterone, and dopamine coursing through our veins.
I considered recreation the high point of our weekdays in the seminary and its end marked the gradual closing of the day.
5:30 p.m.
After spending a good 90 minutes being soaked in sweat comes showertime. But it is actually a misnomer—the water pressure would be so weak then because of so many faucets turned on that we usually use our water buckets and kabo to take a bath.
And then, there are the smart ones who wait until around 5:50. There are fewer people in the bathroom by then, but with so little time left before the evening prayer at 6:00, they’ll take a bath as quickly as they can to avoid being late.
Others have a simpler solution. These kids don’t take a bath altogether and instead wet their hair, spray as much perfume as they can, and pretend they showered—or bathe in rubbing alcohol for that fresh, bacteria-free feeling. While looks can be deceiving because the smelly truth is right under everyone else’s noses.
7:00 p.m.
Dinner is probably the biggest meal of the day. After a meager breakfast and lunch, each table will pool their money to buy at the canteen a tiny can of Blue Bay Tuna, Argentina Corned Beef, luncheon meat, or that fake lechon paksiw and stuff their faces with it. Some will also have pre-ordered pancit canton during recreation from Mana Caring who lived nearby. They’ll also stock up on rice to make dinner extra filling.
Of course, feasts like this typically happen only at the beginning of each month when everyone still has most of their allowance. And I’m using “feast” liberally here because with at least six hungry boys sharing a small can of food—more, if folks from other tables decide to ask for a portion—it can be hardly called as such. Nevertheless, gorging on food other than the usual fare of fish and vegetables is definitely a cause for celebration.
7:30 p.m.
“Should I tell her I like her?”
“Dude, you’ve asked me that a million times this evening. Just go and tell her already.”
It was senior year and I was asking Kirk for advice on girls. He was clearly getting tired of hearing the same question over and over again. But he was our batch’s resident lovemeister, having been the first among us to have a girlfriend. So if there’s something who I thought was mature enough to guide someone like me, it was him.
This happened during our so-called free time, the schedule after dinner where it’s basically a free-for-all, within reason, of course. We could chat and chill almost anywhere, but most of us would hang out on the basketball court.
On a clear night, we’d sit under a blanket of stars, watching satellites and the occasional airplane fly by. By the time I was in third year, I’d be on one of the concrete benches with Kirk, Nick, and Joey Boy, a talented guitarist who was in second year, and we’d play guitar and sing our repertoire of songs that was heavy on boy bands. Mostly. But yeah, boy bands. Backstreet Boys. 98?. Code Red. We played a lot of rock, metal, and alternative music too from Oasis, Metallica, Eraserheads, Rivermaya, and Parokya ni Edgar just to balance all the syrupy sappiness.
But probably the biggest musical act that ever played during free time wasn’t the kind of band one would expect.
I first heard them when I was in our classroom reading a book or magazine or chatting with one of my classmates. From a distance I could hear the steady beat of what sounded like a marching band, which grew louder as it approached. And then there they were, a group of 10 or so kids from the lower batches playing marching band music minus the instruments. Instead they used whatever stuff they could put their hands on that resembled the real thing, the most outstanding of which were their fake melodicas from computer keyboards that they stole from the computer lab. They did several of these gigs during free time and they always delivered a solid 10 when it came to performance and pure entertainment value. And the musicality? Who cares when everybody’s dying of laughter?
8:00 p.m.
As if eight or so hours of classes weren’t enough, we also had what we called “study period” where we’d spend an hour of self-study every day except on Saturdays. At least that’s what we’re expected to do. But as one might expect from a bunch of teenage boys, we spent as little time as possible on actual study.
That’s especially the case when one has a classmate like Henrik. He was our resident genius, the type of guy who never has to write down the solution to a math problem because he does it all in his head. From physics and chemistry to all our math subjects, almost everybody counted on him to help solve our assignments that dealt with numbers. Even the other math wizards consulted him just to make sure they had the right solution. We’re so dependent on his genius that we often joked that our Physics teacher only needed to check Henrik’s assignment and give the entire class the same grade because we all copied from him anyway.
While I think I also did my fair share of studying, I mostly remember just drawing or writing a lot on my notebooks. I practiced my craft by writing letters to girls and penpals or writing song lyrics for the band that Nick, Kirk, Joey Boy, and I were forming. I didn’t consider those as practice then but that’s what those things amounted to eventually.
Others would just read novels during study period. Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum novels were popular then. And if these authors were Jesus, my classmates Percival and Harry would’ve been their disciples. On most evenings, I’d see them slumped on their study tables focused on the pages of books like The Bourne Supremacy and Patriot Games.
I wasn’t much of a book reader myself. I generally preferred ones that had pictures. At least that was until Father Larry, the seminary’s rector and our English teacher, assigned us to read one book or short story every week and submit a summary of what we read to him. He didn’t recommend books or stories, so we ended up reading what we actually liked and made the activity lot more fun rather than a chore.
Study periods are meant to be quiet. While this helped those who really wanted to focus on their studies, it also benefited those who preferred an early shut-eye. This took a lot of trust on the part of the person sleeping. One dozes off in the belief that their seatmate would wake them up in case a priest suddenly appears and does his rounds in the classrooms and in the study hall. But study period isn’t just about learning stuff from books. It also taught us life lessons. Like never trusting one’s classmate to wake them up every single time. Because nobody woke up a seminarian one time when he fell asleep in the study hall. When the bell for night prayer rang, the other kids simply turned off the lights and left.
Maybe that’s why non scholae sed vitae discimus is among every seminarian’s favorite Latin proverbs. “We study not for school but for life.” And when people you trust literally leave you in the dark, it’s one lesson you’ll never forget.
9:00 p.m.
We capped off every day with prayer as a community. Like the morning prayer, the atmosphere during night prayer is quiet—everybody is ready to sleep. That is, except on Tuesday nights when someone who isn’t a prayer leader is highly like to get up the lectern and read the following passage from memory:
Stay sober and alert. Your opponent the devil is prowling like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, solid in your faith.
– 1 Peter 5:8-9a
Maybe because it’s a short verse and the fact that we hear it every week, but it’s one of those lines that probably every seminarian knows to this day.
9:30 p.m.
Slowly and quietly, we head on to the dormitory, change into our sleepwear, and then wash our faces and brush our teeth in the bathroom downstairs. The pace is much slower after a long day of praying, studying, and playing.
10:00 p.m.
The community bell rings one last time, signaling the end of the day. The lights in the dormitory turn off and we’d all be in our beds, making our merry way to dreamland.
At least that’s the theory.
Seminarians who were visited by their parents in the day would be approached by those in neighboring beds to ask for food. Resistance is futile because everybody knows their folks gave them a fresh supply of snacks. So, they’ll grudgingly unlock their cabinet and take out a pack of biscuits or whatever their parents gave them.
From a distance, two seniors talk about a Japanese super robot called Voltes V and wonder if it will win against a slew of imaginary enemies. They enumerate one enemy after another, with one more ludicrous than the last. The entire dormitory is dying in suppressed laughter. That is except for the prefect of discipline who is now slowly making his way to the couple of storytellers.
“Get up. Kneel down,” he commands them and two other juniors who were caught in the comedic gunfire, and then leaves.
The rest of us chuckle ourselves to sleep.