School Year 1977-1978
Grade Three was a year defined by quiet resilience and hard-earned victories. I was not assigned to the top section, a distinction that, at the time, felt significant.
Our family was not well-off, but that year taught me an important lesson. Like many children determined to prove their worth, I learned to carry myself with quiet confidence, even when it meant masking my insecurities behind a brave face.
More importantly, I discovered that effort does not lose its value simply because it goes unnoticed. Every hour of work, every small improvement, and every act of perseverance quietly accumulates over time.
And then, often when you least expect it, those unseen efforts begin to reveal themselves. What once seemed invisible is finally recognized, and the rewards of persistence become impossible to ignore.
By then, I had long suspected that my Grade Two teacher did not think much of me.
So when I entered Grade Three and found myself assigned to Section Four, I was not surprised. It felt less like a setback and more like the confirmation of something I had quietly expected all along, an unspoken judgment finally made official.
Section Four was a step down from where I had been the previous year. At our school, everyone understood what the section assignments meant, even if no one openly discussed them.
The system at Pardo Elementary was simple and rigid. Section One was reserved for the students considered the brightest, the ones teachers praised, trusted with responsibilities, and proudly showcased during school events.
The rest of us were distributed among the lower sections, where it often seemed that expectations were lower and opportunities fewer. It was easy to feel overlooked, as though you existed on the margins of the school's attention.
My teacher that year was Mrs. Abao, a woman in her forties who carried herself with a calm, understated dignity. There was nothing particularly imposing about her, yet she possessed a quiet presence that commanded respect.
On the first day of class, I could not tell whether she would notice me at all or whether I would once again blend into the background, another student occupying a desk and little more.
By then, I had already learned that being unnoticed and being unseen were not the same thing.
Whatever the world thought of Section Four, I had not given up on myself. I kept pace with the lessons and, before long, found myself competing with the sharpest minds in the room, among them a girl named Marissa Buaya, who was quick, formidable, and not easy to beat.
Our teacher held classroom contests that I still remember vividly.
We would stand in a line between the desks, and for every correct answer, we took a step forward. Whoever reached the front of the room first was declared the brightest in the class.
I stepped forward often. Sometimes Marissa reached the front before I did; sometimes I did.
But I was always there, part of the contest, moving forward and that was everything.
That year, my learning deepened. I studied English and Filipino grammar with growing fluency.
In Mathematics, I moved beyond addition and subtraction into multiplication, division, and the early, tentative edges of fractions.
Each new concept felt like a door opening onto a larger room.
More than anything else that year, I longed for my teacher’s approval. The wounds left by Grade Two, a year of being overlooked, underestimated, and even scolded over something as trivial as a coffee stain, had not fully healed. The hunger for recognition lingered. It drove me harder than any lesson or assignment ever could. More than good grades, I wanted Mrs. Abao to notice me. I wanted her to see what I was capable of.
One periodical examination brought that desire into focus.
When the papers were returned, I discovered that I had made only two mistakes. Another classmate had earned the same score. Mrs. Abao congratulated both of us, but then, with a careful hesitation that suggested she was choosing her words, she raised a possibility. She wondered aloud whether one of us might have copied from the other.
The comment was not harsh, but it landed heavily. I had not cheated. I knew that with a certainty that left no room for doubt. Every answer on my paper was my own.
For a moment, however, it seemed easier for others to believe that a student from Section Four had copied than to accept that he might have genuinely excelled.
The truth emerged soon enough. Our scores were not merely among the best in our class; they were the highest in the entire Grade Three level. We had outperformed students from every section, including Section One, where academic excellence was expected and routinely celebrated.
For me, the result meant more than a high mark on an examination. It was evidence that ability was not determined by the section printed on a class roster. Talent, effort, and determination could be found anywhere, even in places people rarely thought to look.
I genuinely liked my classmates that year. There was no bullying, no cruelty, and none of the social hierarchies that often make childhood more complicated than it needs to be. What existed instead was the easy camaraderie of children brought together by circumstance and united by shared routines, laughter, and mischief. We laughed often, and we laughed without restraint.
One morning during gardening time, that laughter got us into trouble.
It began, as many childhood adventures do, with a questionable idea that seemed perfectly reasonable at the time. I started throwing small lumps of clay at the wall near the Industrial Arts building.
Within moments, several classmates joined in. Soon we were all flinging clay at the wall and erupting into fits of laughter, completely absorbed in the moment and convinced that the world revolved around our amusement.
It did not.
Without warning, Mr. Abasolo, the Industrial Arts teacher, stepped out from behind the door. The laughter stopped instantly. The transformation was almost miraculous. A moment earlier we had been a noisy crowd of carefree children; now we stood frozen, suddenly aware that adults existed.
Mr. Abasolo scolded us with the calm efficiency of a man who had undoubtedly witnessed countless versions of the same scene over the years.
Panicking and desperate to improve the situation, I did what many children do when cornered: I attempted an explanation.
“You see, sir,” I said, “I was throwing stones to remove the clay from the wall.”
Even as the words left my mouth, I realized how absurd they sounded. The explanation was so illogical that it somehow managed to make the situation worse. My classmates knew it. Mr. Abasolo knew it. Most importantly, I knew it.
Fortunately, we survived the scolding with nothing more than wounded pride.
Yet the incident acquired a second life among us. For years afterward, my spectacularly unconvincing excuse became one of our favorite private jokes, the kind that could trigger laughter with a single sentence and needed no explanation for anyone who had been there that day.
The desire to be seen as capable, as someone worthy of attention and approval, sometimes led me into choices that, in hindsight, cost more than they were worth. At that age, I did not yet understand the difference between genuine confidence and the performance of confidence. I only knew that I wanted people to notice me.
During school fundraisers, I was always among the first to raise my hand. I volunteered contributions even when none were expected, and I repeatedly asked my mother for money despite knowing how difficult things were at home.
She never refused me outright. Instead, she would quietly search for the coins or bills I requested. Only years later did I recognize the sacrifice hidden within those moments and the silence that often accompanied them.
One fundraising drive remains especially vivid in my memory.
I asked my mother for two pesos and brought the money to school the next morning. When the collection began, I eagerly placed it in my teacher’s hand, feeling a surge of pride as I did so. Like many children, I hoped the gesture would be noticed. I glanced around the room, expecting others to follow.
No one did.
I was both the first and the last to contribute.
In that instant, the pride evaporated. Two pesos was not a trivial amount for a family like ours. It represented something real, a small sacrifice made by my mother, who had far more important uses for that money than helping her son impress a classroom.
A wave of regret washed over me. I could have remained silent. I could have kept the money. My mother would never have known.
But deep down, I understood what had happened.
I had not given the money for the fundraiser.
I had given it for myself.
I wanted to be seen as generous, responsible, and important. I wanted my teacher to notice me. I wanted my classmates to admire me. Most of all, I wanted to become the person I imagined they would respect.
It was a small childhood mistake, but it taught me something enduring: when recognition becomes more important than authenticity, even acts that appear generous can be driven by vanity.
Years later, I remember neither the fundraiser nor whatever cause it supported. What I remember is my mother's quiet sacrifice and the uncomfortable realization that I had asked for it not out of generosity, but out of a longing to be seen.
But the effort, the studying, the competing, the constant reaching for something just beyond my grasp, did not go entirely unnoticed.
Over the course of the year, Mrs. Abao began to pay attention.
On several occasions, she quietly singled me out, along with another classmate, and invited us to visit her home during special family gatherings and celebrations.
To an adult, it might seem like a small gesture. To a child, it was something else entirely.
For a boy who had spent much of the previous year feeling invisible, overlooked, and uncertain of his place in the classroom, the invitation carried a meaning far beyond the event itself.
It was recognition.
Not the kind that came with certificates, medals, or public praise, but something quieter and, in some ways, more meaningful. It told me that she knew who I was. She had noticed my effort. She had seen me.
I cannot remember everything we talked about during those visits, nor can I recall every detail of the occasions themselves. What remains vivid is the feeling they left behind.
For the first time in a long while, I no longer felt like a student sitting unnoticed at the edge of the room. I felt valued.
Looking back, I realize that children often work harder for recognition than for rewards. Sometimes a simple gesture from a teacher, a word of encouragement, an invitation, a sign that they have been paying attention, can alter the way a child sees himself.
Mrs. Abao may never have known how much those invitations meant to me. But they gave me something I had been searching for ever since Grade Two: proof that effort, even when it seems invisible, is eventually seen.
There was another incident that year that has remained with me ever since, though time has transformed it from a source of embarrassment into one of those memories I can now laugh about.
One morning, Mama sent me to school carrying a small batch of homemade coconut candies to sell to my classmates.
In theory, I liked the arrangement. There was a commission involved, after all, and a boy who carefully counted every centavo could certainly appreciate the prospect of earning a little extra money.
But the moment I walked into the classroom, my enthusiasm disappeared.
Somewhere in my young mind, selling things felt like an admission that our family needed money. And admitting that, even indirectly, to the very classmates and teachers whose approval I sought felt unbearable.
I had spent the year trying to prove that I belonged. Selling candies seemed, to me, like exposing a part of my life I preferred to keep hidden.
So I said nothing.
I sat through the entire school day with the candies tucked safely away in my bag, untouched and unsold. Every opportunity to mention them came and went. Each time, pride won.
Only during the final minutes before dismissal did courage finally gain a narrow victory over embarrassment.
I leaned toward a few classmates and said, as casually as I could manage, “I have coconut candies. Do you want some?”
Notice what I did not say.
I never mentioned that the candies were for sale.
I offered them as though they were gifts, as if I were sharing treats out of generosity rather than trying to help my mother earn a little income.
By then, it was too late.
When I arrived home, Mama was understandably upset. Almost nothing had been sold. A few candies remained, but that hardly mattered. The opportunity was gone. The small commission I might have earned had vanished, and so had much of the money she had invested in making the candies in the first place.
She did not need to raise her voice. The disappointment on her face communicated everything I needed to know.
Looking back, I see the irony clearly. I was not ashamed of being poor. I was ashamed of being seen as poor. There is a difference.
It took me many years to understand that there is dignity in honest work and no dishonor in helping one's family. The real embarrassment was not selling candies to my classmates. It was allowing pride to matter more than the sacrifice my mother had made.
We were a large family, and the middle of a large family is a particular kind of place. You inherit what the older children have outgrown. Clothes, shoes, school supplies, everything follows a predictable path downward. That was the family economy, and for many years, it became my role within it.
When the school bag I had inherited from my older brother finally gave up, its seams splitting apart and its straps worn thin from years of use, my mother did not take me to a store to buy a replacement.
Instead, she sat down at her sewing machine.
She gathered scraps of fabric left over from her sewing work, pieces of old clothing, and whatever usable material she could find. Then she stitched them together, partly by machine and partly by hand, transforming remnants into something practical and sturdy.
The result was a school bag unlike any other in the classroom.
I carried it to school every day without explanation. Children are often acutely aware of anything that sets them apart, and I knew my bag was different. Yet I said nothing about where it came from or how it had been made.
Then one afternoon, a neighborhood girl we called Jica, short for Jessica, noticed it.
With genuine enthusiasm, she smiled and said, “Ninduta bag nimo, Uly, a!”—“Your bag is really beautiful, Uly!”
The compliment caught me completely by surprise.
I had expected people to notice the bag because it was unusual. I had never imagined someone might admire it.
Years have passed, yet I still think about that moment.
Jica probably forgot the remark almost as soon as she said it. To her, it was likely nothing more than a spontaneous observation. But to me, it became something much larger.
She saw beauty where I had seen only necessity. She looked at something fashioned from scraps and remnants and appreciated it for what it was rather than what it lacked.
More importantly, she unknowingly honored the work behind it.
Looking back, I realize that her compliment was not really about the bag. It was about my mother's ingenuity, resourcefulness, and determination to provide for her children with whatever means she had available.
Of all the praise I received during those years, that simple remark remains one of the most memorable. It was perhaps the kindest acknowledgment my mother's handiwork ever received and one she never even heard.
These were the years of martial law under President Ferdinand Marcos, a period that cast a long shadow across the country. As children, we did not fully understand politics or power, but we sensed the weight of the times in the lives of the adults around us. Yet even in those difficult years, there were gestures of care that reached us in simple, tangible ways.
At school, the government operated a feeding program that provided Nutribun, a fortified bread distributed to public school children, often accompanied by powdered skim milk. The program was intended especially for children from low-income families, a quiet acknowledgment that many arrived at school carrying more than books and notebooks. Some came carrying hunger.
The bread had a peculiar smell that fascinated and puzzled us. To our young noses, it bore an unfortunate resemblance to the odor we associated with cockroaches.
Children, however, have a remarkable ability to turn almost anything into a joke.
Before long, we had given it a nickname: pan de ok-ok, or “cockroach bread.” We laughed every time we said it, repeating the phrase with the delight that only schoolchildren can find in something mildly disgusting.
Yet when recess arrived, we lined up for it without hesitation.
Whatever it smelled like, it was food. It filled empty stomachs, eased the gnawing hunger that could make lessons harder to follow, and carried us through the remainder of the morning.
My favorite part of the program, however, was not the bread but the powdered skim milk.
Pale, slightly sweet, and imperfectly mixed, it dissolved into water and became something that was not quite fresh milk, yet close enough to feel like a small luxury. To me, it tasted wonderful.
I lined up for it at every recess without embarrassment or hesitation. Hunger has a way of stripping away pride and replacing it with simple practicality.
Standing beside me in those lines were classmates such as Julius, Francisco, Roel, and Eulogio. Roel and Eulogio were also neighbors from Kabulihan, which made the routine feel even more familiar.
We waited together with our tin cups in hand, trading jokes, talking about school, and sharing the easy companionship of childhood.
Looking back, I realize that those lines were about more than bread and milk. They were small gatherings of children from families facing similar struggles, united not by hardship alone but by the ordinary resilience that childhood somehow makes possible.
We did not think of ourselves as poor. We were simply classmates standing in line, eager for recess, grateful for something to eat, and unaware that one day these modest moments would become some of our most enduring memories.
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