My true-blue Cebuano a.k.a. bisdak
Nanay had this word for sissies. I
remember her spewing this crisp expletive whenever
1)
we kids did a sloppy job;
2)
we did not move in a snappy way;
3)
we could not decide or we made stupid decisions;
4)
we acted like wimps; or
5)
someone else moved the way we kids did in
numbers 1-4.
No, I do not associate it with gay-hood inasmuch as first, I am not a
boy; and second, I think sissy-ness applies to both male and female, young or
old even if Wikipedia says it somehow applies to males.
Now why did I think of pakloy
after not hearing it in like thousands of years? It’s a lazy Christmas morning
and I had the luxury of wasting sometime on something insignificant, say, the
15-minute video (no sound) of a certain mayor in a situation with security
guards of a posh subdivision in the National Capital Region.
Uneventful at first, until there’s somebody so concerned enough to pull
out an umbrella and made payong
someone who happens to be male. I tried figuring
out whether it was drizzling or something: looks like it was not. Of course videos can be deceiving; I must have
missed the drizzle.
“Ka-pakloy ba,” I heard
myself muttering.
What’s the big deal with men who have to be sheltered with umbrellas anyway? So that they will not catch colds? Or a fever?
If it was indeed drizzling can they not carry umbrellas by
themselves?
Ohw-kay then. What’s the more
potent turn-off: men who have to be sheltered with umbrellas (pinapayungan) or men who always get
colds (sipunin)?
Multiply the situation, radiating outside the NCR. It is not rare to see the most masculine of
men scampering for shelter with the slightest hint of a drizzle. If someone treats them like babies then umbrellas
are flipped open somewhere offering refuge.
Long shot, but yes, I see this type of use of the umbrella as a
reflection of how things are being run in this country. Those who are expected to make things happen
are actually hiding under the shelter of position and power. Rolling up one’s sleeves and getting one’s
hands dirty to get things done have now become relative. That’s the real turn-off.
I know my closest friends do not feel slighted when I gently turn down
any offer for being “payonged”. For one, I have proven to myself that
drizzles do not have a direct correlation to being sick. Let those who have money to spend on
elaborate research disprove that.
While there are a million ways of separating the sissies from the willful,
it may take so much effort to convince me that umbrellas are not among them.
*****
Cotabato City
25 December 2013
Aveen Acuña-Gulo posts in her Facebook as the Monumental Operations
Manager (MOM) who is a Bukidnon-born Cebuano mother of three (3)
Maguindanao-Ilonggo-Cotabateño children. She will always be a child at heart
even if she is a hundred years old. :-)
