I Couldn't Resist Posting This

The following story is definite proof that I am still a kid, hehehe. I hope.

A few nights ago, I was at a friend's house along with four others for a project. There was Mario, the eccentric rich kid who had a bevy of cool stuff and who owned the place; Jorge, the group leader with a penchant for break dancing; Joaquin, the weirdo who was the only other one besides me obsessed with the Church; and finally, Marissa, who is THE prettiest and sexiest girl in the whole class. We were assigned to do a fifteen minute film on nursing homes for the elderly in one of my sociology classes-- with only an eight day schedule. Since none of us were exactly budding filmmakers, save Mario, who dabbled in freelance editing and special effects, those eight days were especially taxing and constricting.

We went over to Mario's place to do some last minute editing; we shot well over an hour and a half worth of interviews with many elderly men and women, abandoned by their families in the streets and the slums, whose stories were sure to make even the hardest hearts melt. But this post is not about their stories; that is for another time. This concerns something infinitely more light-hearted and insignificant. Unluckily, Mario lived in an area far from all our residences: the shortest travel time took at least forty five minutes, and that was Joaquin's place. But since it was a Friday evening, it could very well have taken at least three times that amount of time (Manila traffic is purgatorial, at the very least, and infernal at worst). So, we decided to sleep that night in Mario's place.

Mario's room was quite large: it had its own bathroom, a study corner, a small altar to the eastern side, and a huge Mac to the north. His bed was at the center. We all slept on the floor, much to Mario's delight; he just couldn't resist oohing and aahing at the sheer softness of his king sized bed. And, since Marissa was the only girl among our group, she was naturally segregated to the far corner of Mario's room (the guest rooms were all being renovated, the master suite was completely untouchable). Now, as I said, she was the prettiest girl in class, but surprisingly enough, she remained aloof and somewhat naive despite all the cat calls she gets in every class (she was raised in a very conservative family). It also did not help that her father was an army general.

We slept at 4am, after ironing out all the kinks and trimming the movie to its bare maximum, and it was a great challenge as well, since we wanted to preserve the profundity, pathos and gravitas of the interviews as much as possible. All of our interviews with the elderly people we featured were heartbreaking and moving, and tugs at the viscera as much as it tugs at the heart. Thankfully, we managed to feature all of them without sacrificing quality and depth. The boys were huddled to one side of Mario's bed, when I had a sudden urge to take a leak. I entered the bathroom, switched the light on-- and to my utter surprise, there was a huge, black-as-night rat coming out of the toilet. Being extremely phobic of rats, I screamed and panicked, surely waking the others up. They saw the rat coming at them, and all of them leaped and clamored, jumping at Mario's bed. He, too, was shaken, and screamed like a girl (that's what it objectively sounded like!).

So there we were, four guys who would surely strut their masculinity at otherwise any given time-- screaming on top of a king-sized bed, waving pillows and throwing them at the rat, who camouflaged itself expertly in the pitch black darkness. Marissa the girl was naturally worried: since she was nearest to the light switch, she quickly flipped it on, and, seeing the rat coming from under the bed, grabbed Mario's Airsoft rifle in the wall above her sleeping corner, and with expert aim, shot the rat straight at the eye. The rat was thrown backward, tumbled a couple of times, before landing with a sharp thud at the bed's base. Calmly, she threw the rifle to one side, and walked over to the dead rat-- and grabbed it by its tail!

'This rat? you're afraid of this thing?', she asked with barely-concealed laughter. She couldn't contain it any longer, and laughed loudly at us.

'Ratty ratty rat rat! Ratatouille-ratty-rat-rat! Hahahahahha!'

One by one, red faced and embarrassed, we tried to maintain composure and appear as calm as possible. Luckily, I hadn't screamed as much as the others, and indeed, I had a cold that night, which made me sound vaguely like Jorge. The others huddled among themselves, and were I of a more *flexible* persuasion I would have detected something tangentially homoerotic about the whole situation. As for Marissa, she opened the huge window facing her, and threw the dead rat into Mario's garden, where I am sure it eventually provided some sustenance for some cat or other creepy creature of the night (perhaps a snake, or some colony of ants). Then, out of nowhere, Mario's radio suddenly switched on, and strangely enough, the George Michael song 'Careless Whisper' started playing. Apparently, Jorge accidentally sat or stepped on the remote control.

And, as if that weren't embarrassment enough, Marissa just happened to have a camera nearby. She took a snapshot of us, still reeling from the incident, huddled on top of the bed, scared s--tless and panting and sweating and obviously restless.

'Pretty boys, you are!', she said with a loud laugh. Eventually, we all settled back to sleep; I didn't dare sleep on the floor out of fear that another rat might be present, so I grabbed some chairs outside and made a sturdy, somewhat-comfortable bed out of it. The rest of the guys slept on Mario's bed, while I am sure Marissa had happy, funny dreams that night. Proof of this was the fact that the normally placid, complacent and well-mannered girl woke us up screaming and laughing, throwing some black socks from Marco's closet in an effort to catch us at unawares again.

The project, thankfully, was finished. Although I am sure Marissa made some 'last minute adjustments' with it, perhaps even adding some 'deleted scenes' for the heck of it. Rest assured, I am going to find out tomorrow when we screen our short film to the whole class. LOL.