Everybody (Apparently) Wants to Rule to the World

It’s the third frustrating day of the fruitless search for Tears For Fears tickets – the scarcity of tickets being compounded by my kuripot refusal to buy anything above five thousand pesos. I told Ron I am imposing a moratorium on large expenses – all funds intended for purchases above 5,000 being earmarked for charity, specifically the “Louis Vuitton Fund for Indigent Miscen Desiderios”, my philosophy being that “A bag is thing of beauty forever” and a Tears for Fears concert lasts only three hours (even shorter if Roland Orzibal keels over before the concert ends, given his advanced age).    

Needless to say, this philosophy did not gain wide acceptance in the Desiderio-Dime household.  Thus, I am still compelled to look for the darn tickets.

As I have been repeatedly reminded, I should have bought the tickets three weeks ago when they started selling them. However, how the heck was I supposed to know that this concert was going to be this popular?  I didn’t want to watch them when they were famous in the ‘80s!  Why would I want to watch them now that they’re well…a “retro” band?  I figured, nobody would be lining up for the tickets and that they'd probably mark them down after a week....

Ok, so I was wrong.  

Apparently, since baston pants, big hair and acid wash are back, ‘80s bands are popular again. Next thing you know, we’ll all be lining up for the Pepsi and Shirlie Reunion Concert and Aquanet share prices will hit the roof.   

Honestly, my happy memories of the friendships I formed in college notwithstanding, I don’t get the fascination with the whole ‘80s thing.  It’s probably cool for the younger kids – the same way I used to think James Dean and the whole Rebel Without a Cause was cool. In fact, to my friend’s consternation, her 15 year old (Yes, I have friends with 15 year old children, and yes, I know that makes me old) asked her for a “vintage” Member’s Only jacket for Christmas.  Really.  (And to think that I slept soundly for years, assured that the Fashion Police had eradicated last “Member” as early as 1990.)  

If I force myself to remember being 17 years old in the '80s (a big glass of vodka helps with this),  I recall the world’s most awkward teenager. And UP Diliman in the ‘80s was not a kind, nurturing place for awkward teenagers.

Examine defense Exhibit "A" :

When I think about the ‘80s, I remember my bad hair (all three feet of it - 2 feet being my bangs), my even worse clothes (baston-acid-wash-maong-pants-tucked-into-my-hightop-purple-converse – all at the same time, may I add), teenage angst compounded by teenage acne and braces. (You get a prize for correctly identifying yours truly.)

And let’s not forget that I was a total fashion victim and wore blue contact lenses for several years – prompting catcalls of  “X-men! X-men!” from my evil friends as I passed their tambayan.

There was also first love and other disasters, including all my (regularly replaced) “one true loves” who usually turned out to be frogs with utterly no princely attributes.  Good thing I was too picky (and deathly afraid of my dad’s wrath if discovered with a boyfriend) that I managed to avoid most emotional entanglements except for the one that got away and the one that established that all boys are jerks at the age of 18.  Thus, while my friends were mooning over Ely Buendia (who happened to be a dorm mate), I had a huge crush on the totally unattainable (and now that I think about it, not very attractive) Lou Diamond Phillips – and if you don’t know who that is, good for you.

And while on the subject, let’s not forget getting my heart broken (ok so maybe I exaggerate – but it sure felt like it at the time) for the first time – of all places - in Greenbelt Park by said jerk, while all my friends were inside Faces, probably dancing to Mike Francis (if one can actually dance to Mike Francis) while on the ledge.  

And then there were the perils of my chemistry class with its exploding beakers – or at least mine exploded, everyone else’s were fine; dissecting poor unsuspecting frogs while tying to breathe through my mouth for fear of losing my lunch and to my utter humiliation (and my parent’s dire threats of being grounded forever) – being forced to repeat Calculus because I got a 4.0 the first time I took the class.  In hindsight, this was a good thing.  It made me clearly see that I did not have the intelligence or inclination for medical school – thereby saving my parents hundreds of thousands of pesos in wasted tuition money.

It’s a wonder I survived and lived to the ripe old age I am now.  Especially if you consider that I was forced to subsist on fishballs and dorm food for four, long, formative years of  my early adulthood.

So you see why I’m not exactly crazy about reminiscing about the ‘80s. 

Still, to give credit where credit is due, life was simpler then.

Prospective blind dates had no option to google you and judge you by your profile picture on Facebook.  You kinda had to rely on good faith and  my friend Michelle’s  optimism that “Fate” would send you the perfect guy – every time you were brave enough to risk rejection (and getting reprimanded for breaking curfew) by going out on a blind date.  

There were no cell phones and no text.  Thus, it was easy to avoid unwanted “admirers” – you just needed to hide out in your dorm room and wait for the person paging you to translate the deathly silence to mean that you weren’t there.  Eventually, unless they were extremely determined (I know someone who camped out in the lobby waiting for me for 2 hours - I got caught leaving just as I thought it was safe to come out), they usually went away after this.  Or even better, you could pretend to be someone else and tell whoever it was that well – you weren’t there.   (This worked lots of times by the way.)

And if you promised someone you'd be somewhere at 8 o'clock, you were there at  8 o'clock (...ok, maybe 8:30) because back then, there was no way to communicate that due to sudden (right....) illness, you had to bail out at the last minute and your friends would probably kill you if you did a no-show.

Further, there was the thrill of  checking the revolving message rack in the lobby to see if your boy-du-jour had left you a note – people actually wrote notes then – instead of sending text messages that require a  Morse code expert to interpret (i.e. “w8 4 me, m runng l8” OR, my all time favorite text message “kumain n me, kumain n u? [smiley face] ). 

In those days, .75 centavos went far – or at least until as far as A.S.   The Ikot jeep cost all of .75 centavos, as did an unlimited telephone call on the red payphones.  With 75 centavos, you could actually drag a chair to the telephone and site there talking about inanities for hours and all you risked was being killed by the lynch mob forming in the line behind you of people waiting to use the phone.  

Televisions had only about five channels.  Thus, you were forced to think up alternative methods of entertaining yourself. This was especially true if you lived in Kalayaan dormitory which had a grand total of one television set (with a temperamental rabbit antenna - someone had to be conned into standing next to it holding the antenna at a certain angle) and about 200 kids wanting to watch it...all at the same time.    In my case, "entertainment" once took the form of sneaking out of the fire escape in the middle of the night just to hang out on the roof until the security guard caught us and hauled us to the Dorm Manager’s office to be read the riot act.(But that’s another story)

You actually had a choice of a non - air-conditioned cab (15 pesos from UP to SM North Edsa) as opposed to an air - conditioned one for 10 pesos more.  There were no MMDA officers to arrest overloaded taxicabs either, so taxis would agree to ferry you and as many friends as could possibly fit in one 16 valve Toyota Corolla Taxi to SM North EDSA.  There, you could watch a movie (I recall my favorite being “La Bamba”) for another 15 pesos on the balcony or 10 pesos in the orchestra if this happened to be close to Friday and your allowance was running low.

A blue book was 2.50 and so was a Panda ballpen.  And for 15 pesos, you could eat tapsilog at Rodics and be blissfully, gustatorily happy for a few hours. 

For 25 pesos, you could eat a Quarterpounder at Mcdonalds OR more importantly, buy a can of Aquanet to keep your bangs completely motionless and gravity defying for at least eight hours.

In fact, 25 pesos for a big can of Aquanet was well worth your money.  Note that we hardcore big hair girls went for the dark purple cans of "Extra  Super Hold".  None of that sissy "light hold" variety for us. No sir-eee.  (You do remember that Aquanet was color coded, right? The darker the color of the can, the more lethal it was -  to this day, I am in search for the legendary, mythical black can - Extreme Super Hold - I bet it would come in useful for heavy construction projects.)

Not only did it keep your hair looking like The Cure on a bad  (but good to us ) hair day, my roommates and I have used Aquanet as a substitute for glue, to prevent runs in our stockings, and once, as a blowtorch to kill a huge spider crawling on the wall – you must never, EVER, underestimate the power of Aquanet when combined with a Bic Lighter.

Oh and let’s not forget (as my best friend very recently pointed out) , how much damage it did to the Ozone layer.

Looking back, I realize that I don’t have a lot of memories of actually…(shudder)..studying. 

I did learn one thing though and this being that – my daughter is so NOT going to UP Diliman – unless they allow me to stay in her dorm room with her until she graduates.

And now, after that fruitless and utterly gratuitous trek down memory lane, I’m going back on-line to trawl for possible scalpers of Tears For Fears Tickets.