Let’s look at those tapes

LAST Monday, I had myself vaccinated at the Palanan, Makati Elementary School. The three women in the room, fully clad from head to foot, wore what I thought were Chuck Taylor or Converse shoes, the fancy footwear during my grade school and high school days. I recall Converse as being particularly popular. High-class. An affordable imitation, Edwardson, is now defunct. Or is it? Or is Makati simply that rich and can go Converse in today’s struggle against Covid-19?

My San Beda AB classmate, Ed Ruiz, now teaching at Ateneo, without meaning to, called my attention to those Converse days when the feature on our campus contempo, Raul Contreras, is for some reason, going viral today. And on one Johnny Antilon and ex GSIS-chief Atenean Jun Cruz, among the first to realize in February 1986 that the jig was up and declared for President-elect Cory Aquino. He’s gone now. BTW, could anyone update us on Johnny?

Raul himself was a Bedan through and through, from the get-go up to AB, which he finished with top honors with Raul Roco. But what impelled me to write this tribute was what my campus contempo Ed had called my attention to — Raul’s representing the country in a New York forum of exchanged international high school teeners. He scintillated. The show went viral last week. It is incredible how the computer today can show a program recorded decades ago. Para pong kahapon lamang.

Raul and Nonoy Gallardo, hubby of Celeste Legaspi, headed my 1987 Senate campaign when we had zero budget (OK, Tony Gonzalez, my wife’s employer, soon donated P1 million as seed money. The duo came up with Ampunin si Rene (Adopt Rene), which took off like a shot. A winner, on a shoestring! But 1987 was still shimmering with the EDSA glow and we asked what we could for the country, not what our country could do for us. Early 1988 was a local election, and it has been downward or going south since. Anyway, we returned the P1 million intact to Tony; we had no need for it. Again, the EDSA spirit.

What will we have in 2022? We see some names and can only sigh. But hope springs eternal.

Who would have thought that 45 years after the event, the tape of a 1955 high school forum would go viral?