I find it most difficult to write about the people closest to me because I’m afraid that what I write will never be adequate. And for you Dann, it’s harder because how do I even begin to chronicle over two decades of non-stop crazy.
You must know that my penchant for beauty pageants is a direct and exclusive result of your influence. In third grade, in between sweeping out trash and waxing floors, you would persuade us to rehearse the production number of the beauty contest you were organizing for the following day, the one in which we would charge our classmates one peso entrance fee to compensate for all the trouble we went through to entertain them. Somehow, it didn’t bother them to pay up. I knew we always put on a good show.
At a young age, I learned to put on a brave face amidst adversity when, in the middle of recess in fourth grade, after falling down flat on your face several flights of stairs from the second floor of our elementary building, I witnessed you stand up proudly in front of an obviously shocked crowd and walk off as if the nasty fall didn’t bother you. It was only when we were alone in the courtyard by the flower gardens that you let your guard down and wailed “Trish, sakit sakit!” (Translated: “Trish, it really hurts!” Duplication of words in our vernacular language signifies gravity.) From that incident, I learned to practice how to inner emote, a term you coined many years later, which means to quietly and privately endure pain with a trusted person. After all, much of the world delight on people’s misfortunes so choose your tribe.
While you were never the competitive type, you have always been full of passion and your zest for life has always had a profound effect on me. Much of my creativity and resourcefulness I owe to you because if you had not been my group-mate for every class project and every role playing, I will never learn how to use a malong in a million different ways or a car cover I borrowed from home as an improvised long gown. You always went all out, treating every project with flair and flamboyance as if a FAMAS award depended on it. Your passion was so infectious it seemed only right for me to keep up to be worthy of your kinship.
Later on, I realized that there was never a price for your friendship because amid all the hormone-induced teenage drama we lived through in high school, somehow you always stuck by my side. Not once have you betrayed my confidence in all the time that I’ve known you and I am very fortunate to call you my person, my Christina Yang to Meredith Grey. You know very well that I will do the same for you.
There are many reasons why I think you are a great person but the thing that stands out about you is just how consistent you are with being who you are I guess. You have a refreshing candor and easy-going nature about you that makes anyone you meet so instantly drawn to you. It’s because of you that I learned not to take life too seriously because you always have a way of injecting comic relief in every situation no matter how frightful. In fact, my own sense of humor was largely shaped by more than twenty years of endless bantering with you.
You know damn well that a lot of my stories will likely feature you because I can no longer remember a time when you are not a part of my life. That even after we’ve moved thousands of miles apart, you are still pretty much my 24/7 hotline for distress calls over botched first dates, happy calls over minor and major life wins, or general calls over everything in between.
I cannot be more proud of you and everything that you do including your most recent accomplishment of getting a certification on make-up application. After years of being a human canvass to your abstract taste in colors and style, I can now finally and confidently let you do my wedding make-up, if and when that happens.
To the best damn friend any one could ever have, happy birthday! Looking forward to our next rampa around the world!
P.S. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution personified in the following photos. Scroll at your own risk!
