OUR HIGH school apos in the family for sure cannot fully comprehend this, this August month of 2026 marks the 55th year that I graduated from high school.
That’s half a century (and then some). Some classmates will be flying in from all over to meet and celebrate the occasion with us homies.
A classmate who called to inform me said, “Who knows, in the next years, there might be fewer and fewer of us, so please come.”
Morbid, yes, but meeting once again is a good idea because I’ve a question:
I must admit that in many aspects, 55 years is a lot of water under the Bankerohan Bridge.
What I still cannot get over though are some things that made me have sleepless nights, in high school.
Among these was math. Unlike some hare-fast wizard classmates who whizzed past our first to fourth year of dealing with NUMERALS, I was the lowly turtle in comparison.
Unlike that fable, however, I never won any race (or math quizzes) even if I tried.
As a matter of fact during the second year of high school, I took summer classes because I failed during the regular school year.
My only incentive to pass that Algebra remedial was, had I failed again, I would be in the same level as my younger brother during the incoming school year.
Worse than that, we wouldn’t even be classmates because I’d be relegated to a lower section while he was in the A class. In the lingo of today, a loser.
After school, however, my trauma of Math (or Maths in Aussie land) was over, or so I thought. I would still stiffen for a bit whenever I encountered minor calculations.
With the coming of social media, I stiffened for a while when I encountered the word algorithm. Was that the algorithmic table all over again?
This time, however, my friend explained that I needn’t worry even if I’d always hear people say “It’s the algorithm of this and that…”
Or even if that meant one were doomed to wallow in whatever you fancied online at the moment. Yet in life, that might be a good thing, too.
If one only dwelt in the good, then good energy, good company and good karma might come our way.
With all the negative in the world, good attracts good, and this is not a religious mojo moment, mind you.
In some ways even, it could also be math. Now I know what to ask my wizard classmates when I meet with them.
