In the Hands of Death
I was still in fifth grade back then and attending school felt like a coerced responsibility. I had to sleep earlier than usual since I had to be fully awake by five in the morning. Of course, “fully awake” for me meant being stirred to life by a cold shower and the rants spewing out of the radio on weekdays. What can I say? Back in our place, we start our day with a full serving of diabolic sermons from radio commentators first thing for breakfast. Or at least that is as far as I can remember if my memory won’t fail me. Suffice it to say, though, that Mondays through Fridays were days of burden for a young learner, and to this day I still have the eye bags to prove my point.
Come Saturday and my siesta would stretch from dawn until dusk, and sometimes from dusk until the next evening. Either way, my body would willingly submit itself to a full stretch of rest on weekends that oftentimes I forget to eat. If anorexia was a fad back then, and somehow I felt it was, I could easily pass for a popular restaurant commodity otherwise known as toothpick, but that’s another story. Going back, I could very well recall one lazy afternoon when I touched the freezing hands of death, which is the only way I can literally justify a horrifying experience with an understatement.
