Junior Kelloggs - A Brief Memoir -

from here until the next few posts, I will be
posting a few short tributes to my very special friends. i love you, guys.
*sniff, sniff*

This extra-sentimental memoir was brought about by Selah's e-mail and her comment on my friendster account and the brief chat we had earlier.

translation: if you find this post extra-corny, it's your fault. :p

It's quite flattering to find out that someone still reads my blog, aside from my professor who checks it once a week because he has to.

I started my last year in high school with very little confidence that I was going to make it through. After a very traumatic experience with this *insert any hurtful word here* classmate of mine, who's company I found out I had to suffer for yet another year, I really wasn't looking forward for classes to start again. What's more, I was told that there were a lot of people in my class that I predicted I wouldn't like. The noisy, rowdy, papansin kind of people with lots of attitude problems - people who think they're all that *very bitter tone*. Selah was one of those whom I expected to make my fourth year miserable. As you can see, I'm quite the optimist.

Oh, there were a few things that assured me I'd survive, I guess. Jigz (from LR[1]), Mikki (from FFG[1]) and Paulo (from 3B[1]) were going to be there, but the feeling of abandonment still remained when I found out that most of my third year barkada would either be classmates or would have the same breaks. I felt so isolated I wanted to die.

Of course, fourth year came and went.

Junior Kelloggs defined everything that meant anything to me in Becquerel -IV. It actually seemed quite fitting to be in a group of 4 in my fourth year of high school. There's me, Selah, Jigz and Miks. We had many annexes - being part of bigger groups and having different extra-curricular activities - but at the end of the day, we always turned to each other for comfort, or sometimes, we forced whoever had the problem to submit to being comforted.

Academically, I don't know if we actually did each other any good. We were more like partners-in-crime. We cut class or slept in class, failed to submit individual projects, cheated and let others cheat, and a million other offenses. (Mikki actually sent us text messages with a list of reasons why we should've been kicked out ages ago. :P) The funny thing was, we were all class officers and, surprisingly, were often key players in class presentations. This particular thing we gave us more reasons to cut, and our classmates often covered up for us - since we sometimes cut to take care of class projects, anyway.

Yeah, we got away with a couple of things. I cut class so much my physics teacher once asked, on a day when I was "sick" again, if I had already dropped from school.

Maybe you'd wonder why we stuck together. Sometimes I wonder too.

There was only one thing we all actually had in common: We didn't care. We hardly gave a damn what anybody thinks about us. (This particular attitude of mine actually sometimes caused me trouble with my parents, him, and other people. But hey, that's me, and they love me for it. ) We were so comfortable with one another we talked about the growsest stuff (we knew they were growse because other people were appalled by our conversations) and didn't mind.

We were each other's moral support, despite each of our emotional shortcomings. Selah was afraid of attachment, at the same time needing it. I desperately needed to feel. Jigz admitted to needing attention, Mikki needed to be understood. We all did. Individually we were so fragile, so easy to break and so easily tortured, but together, we were assured of having someone when all else failed.

Yes, we were a group, but instead of demanding time from one another, we understood each other's need for time alone. In fact, it was only with this particular barkada that I did not feel so much the desperation for their company, but was thankful whenever I could have it. The more I needed them, the more they leftme alone, until I would come to them asking for someone to catch me, which they'd do more than willingly. The Junior Kelloggs were the only females in my class who had the common sense not to impose their presence on me when I'm crying in the Fourth Floor CR's last cubicle. They were the only girls in my class who had any sense.

Some of our cutting sessions were spent like that. Choosing our individual brooding spots and ignoring each other, at other times pouring our hearts out or laughing loudly in the square gazebo or the English Reading Center, still at other times getting "sick" or sleeping wherever we could after a bad night.

No, I'm not saying we understood one another, I'm not sure we actually did. If there was anything I learned in high school, it was respect and unconditional love. Of course, other people might see it in another way.

[1] see next posts - soon to follow.