Pass it on

Spent the last few weeks reading and rereading a 2004 year end issue of Esquire magazine, which I pilfered from one of the production outfits I've had the pleasure of working with. Talk about gratitude...

Esquire surprisingly came not just as an easy read but a very very good one as well. The topics were a bit off center and the writers, well... they were gods in my eyes. How do you explain the story of a 42 year old dad setting up his apartment into an X-Box center and letting his kids practice until they're ready to face some real full-time gamers. And he did bring them to their headquarters - the Order of Light over at Memphis. Whether you're dad the writer, or the sons out to meet some role models, how much cooler can that get?

Which brings me to my topic: will I make a great dad if ever?

Spare me the pyschobabble bullshit about being a son of my father and that good traits and bad get passed on generations. They even have a name for it, if I recall my 80s Reader's Digest - genetic manifest destiny. This is when you realize you become your father - not instantly, but through the slow, creeping small changes.

I never knew my father...

Ha! Kidding... my dad is alive and well and living a comfortable, if not ostentatious life back in Kalookan. His present day hobbies include annoying the kitchen staff and staying in harm's way during peak operating hours.

this is not about to become a blog for the angst-ridden. What the next few paragraphs will discuss is what my dad is to me and what I expect to become as soon as the torch is passed - which by all indications might be coming pretty soon.

My dad, much like me, professes himself to be an artist. And I do have vivid recollections of how good the old man is. There was this one time during kindergarten when he just chanced upon some yellow felt paper. Looking around, he saw a family picture taken during the 1979 Christmas party at the US Embassy grounds (he was a printing press specialist whatever during the time) where I was conveniently positioned at center. Without as much as an invitation, he proceeded to draw my likeness into the felt and it was so damn accurate. I loved it so much I took it to class the following day, only to have it stolen by some classmate who probably was on the way to a life of crime...I do have the original picture, and I can always recall how good I looked in a 2B pencil...

During college, I wanted to impress a girl classmate and dad was on vacation at the time (he was working in the Middle East then) and obliged me by drawing this girl, a facsimile of which I grudgingly gave. He admitted having trouble with the eyes (they were a bit beautifully unsettling). Armed with another portrait I marched proudly and was able to give it without asking (and getting) nothing in return. Needless to say, I never gave my dad the benefit of telling him what happened with the sketch. It's probably out there somewhere. Years later though, I was able to introduce my dad to her when we became great post-college buddies. We (actually just she) decided we were better off friends, and it was much later that I realized she was right. But that's another story...

Me, i'm bad with drawings. I can hold my own and I remember using up my semester's worth of notebooks with sketches of Transformers and the Justice League. He patiently taught me the fundamentals of sketching, and was nice enough to critique my later works (I used to carry a sketchbook to school during college, and loved drawing movie posters - Robin Hood, Top Gun, etc). Unfortunately, his decision to work abroad cost me lessons in the finer points of drawing - shading and coloring. And I still suck at these points.

The ironic thing is, much as my dad was a great artist who never really had the chance to show his true potential, I appreciated him more for the fact that he liked to read. His choice of material was somewhat questionable, but the sight of cartons and cartons of books around the house spurred me to examine the paperbacks and open some pages. He liked hardboiled detective fiction (80% of his collection), and some of these were downright natty. But hey, I realize if he'd prefer reading a cookbook, I would have appreciated his reading bug the same.

And boy, did I pick up the habit. Along with my brother, we would read and reread old issues of Time, Newsweek, and anything else that passed our hands. Cousins from Cebu would lend us comics and I was able to enjoy the classic Xmen Phoenix saga. I would accompany my mom on her routine trips to Escolta during the early 1980s and beg her to allow me to scour the alleys of Recto for some old MAD paperbacks and Hardy Boys. I think I hold the distinction of being one of the few students at Notre Dame to finish the first 57 issues of Hardy Boys (Tower Treasure up to the Phoenix Firebird). I know there's more, but during the time, it only added up to 57.

Anyway, the reading got so out of hand that I would bug neighbors 10 or 20 years older than me to lend me their books. And despite the surprise, they were often generous to do so.

Of course, dear old dad, despite his physical absence, lent his support. He shipped over a 20-volume encyclopedia that came with an assortment of great book collections, including the then-famous How and Why Wonder Book series, and some classic collections that hooked me to Alice in Wonderland and the Arabian Nights. Even my sisters got into the act, as my elder sister introduced me to the world of Enid Blyton, and both lent me some great trivia and activity books from her rich friends. They're not a voracious as us men, but you can always see Sweet Dreams and Sweet Valley High books strewn about the living room. I even picked someup and read them. They were awful, but the experience did help me understand girls during that painful process called high school.

This is fast becoming a novel, so I'll go back to my original premise already. I guess if genetic manifest destiny is true, i'll be glad to pass on the reading genes to my kids. I realize I can't control which genes to pass, and probably half of the grand total will inevitably come from the mother (shopping, cleanliness, maturity genes) anyway, so i'll be content if I can just pass that one.

Writing is easy. Loving to read is the hard part, as you'll have to considerably suffer through potboiler detective stories, useless trivia, and teensy romance pulps on the way.

Only the strong-willed can survive. And that will be my kid.