On Jan. 1, 1950, I was in firecracker-tossing and torotot-blowing Manila. There were no hydrogen bombs or China-made firework spectaculars. I had just returned from my first trip to Baguio, was a week short of my 11th birthday, and had just begun my freshman year at Arellano High School.

The school was on Calle Teodora Alonzo, near Azcarraga and Avenida Rizal, a rectangular two-story wood building built around an inner court. One went up a few steps to the lobby. Straight ahead was the grand staircase that doubled back at a landing to the second-floor library. The check-out desk was presided over by the super strict Mrs. Josefa E. Marcos. The rest of the second floor and most of the first floor were classrooms. The partitions of the second-floor rear wing could be pushed back to form the auditorium.

There was sex segregation. The right half of the library was for girls and the left for boys. It was the same in classrooms, the half nearest the door was for girls and the half nearest the windows was for boys. Students were seated by height, and being the smallest, I was always in the first row and therefore got called all the time. Because schools had been closed during much of the Japanese Occupation, just about everyone was older than me.

First-year students had vocational classes in the afternoons. Boys had to take a five-minute walk to what had been a grand house. There, we were introduced to woodworking, metal work, electricity, drawing, and I don’t remember what else. We had to do electrical connections, a metal wall vase, a wooden box, and a portrait drawing. Rosa Rosal, the popular movie star, lived next door. We all rushed to the window when someone whistled, the signal that she was passing by.

There were frequent programs evidently to identify any hidden talents. I joined a choral group and was praised by the conductor for singing the loudest. I was also in a Health Day program, bearing a large letter “T.” We were supposed to spell out a slogan in front of the curtain, entering from stage left. The space was so narrow, and I tripped, falling on my butt. In my second year, I was also picked to represent the class in a declamation contest. The theme was “The Bill of Rights,” and Tatay wrote my piece, making me practice outdoors, like Demosthenes. I passed the elimination round and emoted my best. Though a fourth-year student, Rene Cristobal, who later became a big businessman representing Austrian companies, won. Sometimes Goliath wins.

Miss Pacheco spent a good part of sophomore English making us diagram sentences and going through prose and poems like “The Raven,” “Annabel Lee,” and the toughie, “Beowulf,” that inspired us to call another teacher “Grendel” behind her back. We were also initiated into Shakespeare in our third year, when we all trekked to the Philippine Normal School for a performance of “The Merchant of Venice,” performed by Normal School students. I don’t know if it was part of the prescribed course content, but our English teachers went beyond grammar and literature.

Miss Pacheco was also our homeroom adviser, overseeing our weekly homeroom meetings. Juan Macabalitaw, later a diplomat, was the homeroom president. Meetings were in English and observed Robert’s Rules of Order. We spent half the semester debating on details of a Saturday outing to what to us was a distant Balara.

Mrs. Ruiz, our fourth-year English teacher, conducted several sessions on IOUs and checks, including complications like first and second endorsement. There were neither email nor iPhones then, and urgent messages had to be sent by telegram, for which the charge was per word. Mrs. Ruiz made us compose telegrams from long descriptions of sundry emergencies, teaching us to think straight and to the point.

Physics, Geometry, and Algebra were electives, as were some professional-type activities. I enrolled in Journalism. Mr. Morales made us write murder, sports, society, and other imaginary events. The school also operated a practice retail store in the front yard where I was a salesman.

Physical Education included folk dancing, and we spent weeks practicing “La Jota Moncadeña” with our pianist classmate, Ricardo Ledesma. At the big presentation, he missed a bar, and Mr. Raymundo yelled from the other side of the courtyard, “LEDESMA!!!” After that, we were bused to Rizal Memorial Stadium for a city-wide presentation. I was also in a “Maglalatik” number pounding away on coconut shells, shirtless, in an outdoors program one chilly evening.

We were taught the social graces. The school organized a Junior-Senior Prom, requiring boys to escort a girl classmate. I, then a shy 13-year-old, managed to persuade a classmate to be my date. I had always wanted to ride a calesa, and so, combining task with wish, I fetched her in one. I didn’t know how to dance and didn’t object when she told me she would walk home by herself.

Nanay laid down the law. Movies were verboten... I was not to waste money on movies. So of course I did. Classes were mostly half-day, so I had plenty of free afternoons. “Showboat,” “The Great Caruso,” “Ben Hur,” “Prinsipe Amante,” and movies starring Esther Williams, Mario Lanza, Gene Kelly, Marilyn Monroe… I saw them all. Orchestra seats in first-run movie houses cost ₱1.20, which wasn’t too bad. Theaters, however, were cold, and lung cancer had yet to come, so smokers puffed away. Hair, clothes, everything smelled, and I had to take a quick shower on arriving home to avoid maternal wrath. Once I wanted to go to a second-run, double-program movie house, Cine Alegria on Avenida Rizal in front of Espiritu Santo Church. I was on the balcony, and the seats were solihiya, headquarters of surot brigades. I spent the rest of the day scratching.

I was assigned to check out the mail of the family’s publishing business, P.O. Box 1170, on the ground floor of the Manila Post Office on Plaza Lawton. I would go there once or twice a week, and each time took a different route. I wandered as far as Calle San Fernando in San Nicolas and came across a group of urchins caroling a Spanish-language “Villancico de Navidad” with tambourins.

I was intrigued by Intramuros, and a classmate, Rogelio Cortez, and I checked the place out. That must have been in 1952. The walled city was empty and spooky, overgrown with cogon and talahib. We didn’t stay long, but chanced upon San Francisco Church ruins being demolished. I also persuaded Tia Juli to hear New Year’s Eve mass at San Agustin, which I remember for its wooden plank floor, now gone.

Arellano had a bookcase full of books on the adventures of the Bobbsey Twins, the Hardy Boys, and the girl detective Nancy Drew. I read them all. I also dropped by the National Library, then located within the Bilibid Prison compound, entrance on Calle Oroquieta, and to the crowded USIS library on Escolta corner David that had current titles.

Apart from movies, my allowance went to postage stamps and wishful travel, for which my sources were Don Sixto Ortiz on Escolta and the Kodak store on Calle David. Tatay had given me a View-Master set consisting of stereo photos on a round card and a binocular-like viewer. That made me dream of places like the Alps, Venice, Gibraltar, the Grand Canyon, and Aztec pyramids, some of which remain on my bucket list.

Due to my hobbies, I was elected president of the grandly named Research and Philatelic Society. No one seemed to be really interested, and it ended up a one-boy (me) organization. The club adviser was the librarian, Mrs. Josefa E. Marcos, mother of the then Atty. Ferdinand E. Marcos.

That happened to be when I bought myself a sungkaan. Lola Sanang was a real whiz at the game. When it was her turn and there was a sunog, her opponent never got to play and all the sigay ended up in her bowl. Nanay, however, was adamant that sungkâ was malas, and I was made to give it up. I donated it to the Society, in the custody of the club adviser. So 13-year-old me and Mrs. Marcos ended up playing sungkâ every afternoon behind the library stacks. Decades later, President Marcos chuckled when I told him about it.

Graduation was in March 1953. Valedictorian was Alejandro Santos, who became a prominent Bicol physician; Salutatorian was Roberto Guison, later a Petron executive; First Honor was Gerardo P. Sicat, who was professor of economics at the University of the Philippines (UP) and NEDA director-general; I was Second Honor; and Loretta Makasiar, Third Honor, became a UP professor and wife of Gerry Sicat. I’ve lost touch with most of my other classmates, but I know that Josie Ramos occupied a high post in a United Nations agency; Adoring Mendoza became National Library director; Ric Ledesma went on to be doctor to the Archbishops of Manila; Joe Laig was president of a large corporation; and Meding Cochico and I were together at the Central Bank. I still see Gerry now and then. He’s celebrating his 90th on Oct. 12.