Memoirs of an Amnesiac

School bus service always gives us teachers more chances to interact with students especially outside the classroom. One particular afternoon among all those outside-classroom interactions had left a great impression on me. That afternoon, we (the teachers) started sharing about our childhood games. We were all filled with nostalgic reminiscences about all those games. We even remembered each game and how they were played.

Just then a student remarked, “Your games are tiresome, teacher. Today, we have Clash of Clans. All we need to do is sit down, swipe, and click.” After the child said this, I was filled with sympathy for the generation that only gets motivated by graphics, whose imagination is limited, whose every encounter is built on social media tweets, blogs, and shares (and not real-time ones), where everything has to be done with nanosecond (or faster) precision.

With a sigh I shared with the teachers (and the students who were listening intently) how our games (that were built on resourcefulness and intensive interactions with nature) have developed us as individuals. In our games, we have an “it,” that kid who unfortunately gets to be connived at in games, but we never bullied him. In fact, bullying was not a word among us children before. Everything was all part of the game. When the adults see that we have been undermined, they quarrel but for us kids, we’re friends again come next game. Right now parents go for lawsuit after lawsuit for their kids getting bullied. (Oh well, I must say some of those are really legitimate.) Fortunately, none of us ever committed suicide for being bullied.

There was no electricity wasted, no eyesight impaired, and no parents worrying about us getting obese because we only stared at the computer monitors, iPad or tablet screens the whole time. There was only sweat, huge amounts of it and parents whose neurons get wasted because we played too much and forgot to do our chores. (Yes, we do our chores because we all couldn’t afford a yaya. Besides, that would mean we are a lazy sloth and none of us wanted to be called lazy.) With water, slippers, and even electricity posts, we can already conjure up games that are guaranteed to not only be physically stimulating but also highly thrilling and requires strategizing from our young minds.

We have friends we share jolens, lastikos, pogs, stationeries with, and some other kid’s toys that are already extinct these days. We climb trees, even when the adults dissuade us from doing so. No amount of scars incurred from climbing and sometimes falling would deter us from climbing. This shows we all love a different perspective on things and we never seize to grab it. We also learn leadership and choosing sides. Our summers are not filled with trips abroad but with a whole lot of summer fun, more like a rite of passage to a new phase of life. We gain friends and lose them but not over connivance in computer games by forming alliances and truces. We learn to respect every game and the players in it no matter which part of the country our origins may be.

At the end of the day, when we go to our homes, no matter how defeated we may be in one game, we always remember that the next day’s another day. Even when we get to do the same things all over again, nothing compares to having to experience all the fun and laughter with our friends.

Yes, we never had Clash of Clans. The kids of this generation would probably sneer at us for being so backward. But we are better persons who are able to overcome and learn from adversities in life, something that can only be learned through sweat and relentless resourcefulness.