Trauma on Wheels

Trauma on Wheels is the final piece I submitted for my Creative Non-fiction class under Butch Guerrero. I generally chose the most memorable experiences I had while commuting. Interestingly, my classmates were more disturbed with the “molestation” scene which I merely glazed over in my first draft. I added more details in this version.

Trauma on Wheels
I remember the first time I did it alone. I was ten years old and my best friend from school invited me to watch a movie with her at SM North.  Back then, I used to live in Caloocan, and the mall was just a 30-minute bus ride away.  I didn’t want my parents to take me; I wanted to take the bus alone and I was prepared to argue. After much prodding and begging, I was finally allowed to ride the bus on two conditions: that my dad will bring me to the bus stop and that I should be home by 5pm.  That was fine by me.  My heart thumped so hard the entire ride. I was so excited that I didn’t mind the diesel fumes and the gritty leather seats. It was one of the proudest achievements I had as a kid—to ride a bus on my own at ten years old.

I got home that day in one piece and now, almost two decades later, I still commute.  Traveling alone doesn’t seem like the adventure it used to be as a kid but it’s definitely not boring. I’ve ridden busses, trains, tricycles, pedicabs, fx taxis, cabs, boats, ferries, planes, scooters and motorcycles.  I’ve been stepped on, squeezed in, shouted at, sneezed on, and even slept on by strangers.

My friends think I exaggerate whenever I share my “commuting” stories. If only I got them on videotape.  Some stories are too freaky to believe or too sordid to be true but they’re real; they happened. And worst of all, they happened to me.

Birds on a String

This is one of the pieces I wrote for my Creative Non-fiction class under Butch Guerrero. We were assigned to choose a photo from our childhood and write something about it. I chose not to post the photo because of its “controversial” nature, considering that people might not read the story behind it. A description of the photograph is included in the piece.

Birds on a String
While rummaging through an old photo album, I stumbled across an old photo of myself taken when I was about six years old.  The photograph was yellowed with age, and it showed me in a bob cut wearing a white Ghostbusters t-shirt, pajama bottoms and a pair of slippers that were too big for my feet. I was wearing an impish expression on my face—the toothless, “cutesy” smile that I used to hide my tartar-ridden teeth—a subdued expression of glee. There was really nothing extraordinary in the old photo except for the fact that I was holding a rather large string of dead birds in one hand and a handgun on the other.  The handgun looked much too big in my six-year-old hand, but I vaguely remember a feeling of “coolness” as I held that piece of metal.  About two dozen dead birds were bunched neatly in a bundle by my feet; held by a line of thick, white string. It morbidly suggested that I not only touched a gun at six but I can apparently shoot birds as well.

Before animal rights activists scream blue murder, let me just say on my defense that I didn’t kill those birds. My dad did.  I don’t shoot birds as a recreational sport and it’s all because of a duck.