MEDIUM RARE
On second thought, would that title sound better if it was written as “Ode to Olde”?
Old shoes are more comfortable. Old bedsheets are softer come bedtime. Old trees are stronger than saplings. Old friends know you through and true, so you may count on them to be there when you need help, a kind word, a listening ear, sympathy and even empathy.
On the other hand, as Ethel Timbol observed long ago, almost as soon as her hair had turned all silver and white, “When you’re old, you become invisible.” A classmate in college refused to turn her head when a street urchin called out to her, pleadingly, “Lola! Lola!” hoping to sell her a sampaguita garland or two. The boy’s pleas fell on deaf ears because, said my friend, “I’m not a grandmother, certainly not his lola.”
The trouble with old friends is that their numbers, sooner or later, inevitably thin out. As the “queen of crime,” Agatha Christie wrote, using the words of her favorite amateur sleuth Miss Jane Marple, “You are alone when the last one who remembers is gone.”
One day my idol, Chitang Nakpil, who was my mother’s favorite essayist, and I were chatting when the topic turned to old age. I asked her, “Which is supposed to go first? The eyes . . . ears. . . knees?”
Without waiting for her reply, I asked, “Is it true, all at the same time?”
Chitang did not mince her words: “Old age is a disease.”
Your only revenge is that it will come sooner or later to your secret and/or avowed enemies.
Begging the indulgence of readers, may I use this space to reminisce on the 60th year of Medium Rare, for which I’m eternally grateful to my then editor at the Daily Mirror, an afternoon paper before TV’s 6 p.m. news was born. Emilio Aguilar (“Abe”) Cruz called me into his office on my first day to brief me on my duties at the news desk, which would now include a daily column and for which he already had a name, Medium Rare. I told him I didn’t know a thing about politics and he said, “Who said anything about politics? Not politics, not steak. Just write.”