By  LPJ

What was it like when the perks of technology weren’t there? I pondered over this lately and surprised myself with delightful memories of when I was a little girl and growing up in Naga City, south of the big island of Luzon in the Philippines. Through my primary grades and through high school, no computers, no cell phones, no Netflix, and no TV in our house in the province. So, what filled my waking hours besides poring over books. I loved books ever since I could hold one steadily on my lap. And that must have been at the age of 2 or younger.

For one, I played with the neighborhood kids. Because Papa and Mama chose to have English as the main language spoken at home, my playmates often called me “Inglis”. But that didn’t bother me, nor did it deter me from enjoying activities with them as they spoke the dialect of Bicol with me. That’s how I learned Bicol fast. But I continued to convers in English, as my playmates conversed with me in the dialect. I kid myself – perhaps, that’s how my playmates learned English fast, too.

Without the perks of modern technology, we had fun games.

I remember drawing lines on the ground for hopscotch, a skipping game whose goal was to hop all over the enclosed spaces without touching the lines. Hopscotching for hours was rigorous exercise, good for our bones. But it made us thirsty for lemonade squeezed from lemon trees on our backyard.

Inside the house, I simply excelled in jackstones, a speed and accuracy game that involved picking up small metallic star structures off the floor and catching a tiny  ball bounced high enough to give time for the pick up. When my friends and I wanted to play house, we turned over the chairs in our balcony to arrange the walls and rooms designed inside chair legs. Of course, we couldn’t stand to move around the make-shift house. We simply crawled into spaces. Our balcony looked like a mess, but it was paradisical home for us kids at that moment.

In my youth, I fondly remember my spinster auntie leading a group of neighborhood teenagers for “tubig-tubigan”. Tubig means water. The teenage boys would fetch pails of water from the neighbor’s outdoor faucet, pour water around the common yard used as a basketball court at daytimes. Water was also poured to establish lines inside the circle or square. The “Its” would run on the lines and try to catch anyone inside the enclosed spaces. Punishment for the caught players was to make them sing. The singing was restful  entertainment during the game. Some teens aimed to be caught to claim the stage and audience for their singing talent. “Tubig-tubigan” was especially popular during moonlit nights when the soft moon glow was all the light we had in the courtyard. My spinster aunt  was always watchful of those who took advantage of the dark. And if anyone was caught, giggles would ripple like manic taunts.

At times, the courtyard became well lighted up in the evening for the neighborhood dance. In my later teens, music was provided by a neighbor’s phonograph. The gadget was the rave  of our close community at that time. George, the proud American-Filipino teen who owned that phonograph was always the hero of the dance, and he acted it, too.

Music in the neighborhood was also provided by the radio in our house, a large fancy brown box that enclosed several four-inch  tubes that produced powerful sound. When the amateur singing contests in Naga were the central entertainment looked forward to every weekend, Papa brought out our radio to our open balcony, cranked up the volume so the folks in neighboring houses could hear the broadcast. Almost all the homes around us had verandas where the residents would sit themselves comfortably to listen to the amateur contest blared from our radio. That radio was Papa’s pride. And when the radio tubes conked out, gloom temporarily settled in our home. Especially for us children, who slipped into the habit of listening to drama series in the evenings after dinner, while Mama and Papa played bridge in the dining room after the last scraps of food were wiped off the thick narra table.

When not engaged in games, there were always books to look at or read. And there was plenty of time to talk with family members or friends. There was time for courtship. Courtship then involved the suitor vising the lady in her home. In my youth, dates were not encouraged, even frowned upon especially under my parents’ guidance. I find myself amused in recalling courtship that for me started in my teens. Suitor’s visits, depending on personalities, were either sessions for lots of conversation, or simply for shyly staring at each other. So different from now, when I often see pairs engrossed not in each other’s presence but in the company and distraction of cell phones.

The children and youths of today will probably never understand how much fun we had before the perks of technology. The irony is, now there’s not a day that passes without me sitting for hours in front of my laptop. For a myriad things, I have gotten so dependent on the computer. So unlike the days of my childhood and youth – when the perk was the freedom from technology, and the fun without technology.

Don’t get me wrong. I thank God for technology that allows many advances that make work easier and more efficient with convenient gadgets and tools, and life interesting in certain ways. But it is up to us, how we handle the challenges of technology, and how we manage the perks that can go either way.

Linda P. Jacob