Welcome to the Real World and a Mom's Intuition

My son is turning 18 in a week's time. An hour or so ago, he called up. He was in Marikina on his way to teach in a public school and the car was in traffic... I don't know the "gory" details yet - that's an exaggeration from a worried mother, the adjective, I mean. His co-teachers (college students like him) left him by his lonesome to go to the school. Now I think one should have stayed behind to keep him company for safety's sake, right? But no one did. After a while, they came back, there were no students as classes were called off becasue of the typhoon. After telling him that, they had to leave my son again as they weren't well parked. Again, not one soul stayed with him. So much for fair-weathered friends, both literally and figuratively. It's raining badly. Signal number one, I think.

Updates were provided by my son who I guess was worried. In all his months of driving this is the first time it has happened. Some people approached him to help, he said, but he wasn't sure whom to trust. In this day and age, one can never be sure if that's a good Samaritan out there or a carnapper. Sad, no?

My son was perpetually egging me to get in touch with his dad despite all my assurances that help in the form of a mechanic and a sister's driver was coming. But while at first we couldn't get through to his Dad because his phone malfunctions a lot of the time, when we finally did, he said he couldn't leave the school as there was a party with the boys. Duty before family? I'm confused. I thought it's God, then family, then the rest. Oh well.

I hope my son's "misfortune" will be happily resolved and lessons learned. A few years back a friend said that within 45 days from or within one's birthday, odd things happen. I hope this is the oddest ever.

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When my son was in prep, we were about to leave to go malling when a friend of his suddenly appeared at the gate. As we didn't want to call off our trip to the mall nor disappoint the two young boys, I suggested we call the boy's mom so they (the boy and his yaya) could tag along. As we tried to reach the mom, lo and behold, there was a shooting just outside the house. (Earlier, I saw my son listlessly pacing the garage and sweating profusely. Large beads of perspiration dotted his face. I look worriedly at him.) At any rate, we went inside the house and suddenly my son was crying. I thought he was traumatized by it all or had hurt his foot while running and asked for the nebulizer as he is asthmatic. He was really crying hard as he sat on his father's lap across where I was when suddenly I saw a dark stain on his shorts. I said, "what's that?" Wow, when the shorts were taken off, there was blood. He had been hit by the bullet that was released from the security guard's gun outside our gate, a good so many meters away. So he was in pain from a wound that's why the tears. As my husband carried him to the car, he asked, "Am I going to die?" we rushed him to the ER of the UP Infirmary which was closest to us. He was x-rayed and all and luckily, the bullet didn't pierce through. Actually, before we knew he had been hurt, my husband saw a bullet one side of which was no longer whole. Like it had been scraped. Same shape as the side of the wall where it must have bounced off. Anyway, now my son has a scar to show for that experience and has written about it countless times as one of his unforgettable experiences for his classes in school... For a while whenever he'd hear what sounded like gun shots, he was scared. In fact he doesn't like firecrackers or the sound of them. And I can understand why.

SO why did that day, almost 12 years ago dawn on me now? Just before my son left, I was hinting that maybe he shouldn't leave because it was raining very hard. (I was worried the roads would be slippery and all that). But he said "Kawawa mga bata, naghihintay sa school". Again, another case of "Duty calls."

I rest my case.

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Son just got back from his ordeal. He said, "I knew it was a bad day from the start." Earlier, he tried to call his school's registrar's office about registering on line. He was told to go to the school at 9. He left the house, went to the school and was told he couldn't verify in person. He had to call up. So he came back to the house to make the phone call. What a bureaucratic runaround.

Then the car stalled. Now he's across the street to vent his angst with his "co-teachers" who're having lunch. He clarified that one of his co-teachers wanted to stay with him but my son was shy and told him to go. Problem with the car: busted fuses.