MY PERSONAL HISTORY: MEMORIES OF YOUTH AND HIGH SCHOOL DAYS

by: Norberto Betita

After graduation from elementary, I spent my summer vacation helping my mother in selling fishes and fruits. I also helped my elder siblings in harvesting rice for a share. My free days were usually spent at my maternal grandparents’ home helping fetch water and gather firewood. I was enrolled at Surigao High School, a public school which is 12 kilometers away from our hometown, for my first year in 1965. I was about 13 years old then. The devastations of the strong typhoon of 1964 were still evident at the campus. My brother Marrieto worked as a watchman in the same school and lived in a cottage within the campus. I lived with him in the cottage together with my two elder sisters who are studying college.

My high school classmates. Most of the boys including myself were not in the picture.

A week after the start of the school, a mental ability test was conducted for all first year students. Later, I was surprised to have received a basketball from my elder brother. When I asked him what the gift was for, as it was not common for a poor boy to own a standard sized basketball, he told me that I topped the mental ability test against the top students from the best schools in Surigao City. I have not actually seen the result. I don’t remember having seen it posted in the campus. It was never in my thought as a rural folk that I would attain such an achievement. Yet I believed in what my elder brother had to say. However, due to the underlying unfavourable circumstances, I have never been able to maintain serious interest in my studies.  But I maintained my place in the elite section of our class from freshman to senior years. As it was, our classrooms are makeshifts out of the salvaged materials from the ravages of the strong typhoon. Those were described by an American Peace Corps volunteer as even lower than their cow stables in America. Such learning conditions remained with little or no improvement until we graduated. My studies were also affected by my interest in basketball until I finally stopped due to injury. I do have friends who were children of prominent families in Surigao City, who liked me because of my temperate character.  We remained best of friends until our graduation from high school.  For despite my family’s indulgence to common vices of the time, I had never ventured to taste of wine or liquor and neither smoking.

I started to be acquainted with the Holy Bible which I found stacked on a shelf at my elder brother’s cottage when I was in high school. Since then I studied the Ten Commandments and more on the Book of Proverbs. It is with the latter that I learned scriptural verses which taught me to avoid the evils of wine. Up to this writing, I could still memorize the verses in Proverbs 20:1, “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.” In Proverbs 23: 20-23, “Be not among wine bibbers and riotous eaters of flesh. For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty, and drowsiness shall clothed a man with rags.” And finally in Proverbs 23: 29-30, “Who hath wo, who hath sorrow, who hath contention, who hath babblings, who hath wounds without cause, who hath redness of eyes. They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon wine when it is red, when it changes its colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright, for at the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder.”

During those youthful days when all are so excited about parties and dances and proms, I always stayed aloof at the sidelines for even one formal clothing I have none. I just loved to see my good friends in proms as they enjoyed youthful vigor under the craze of modern music, while I volunteered to serve prepared snacks for the events. But I loved to dance, and I used to find these opportunities only in barn and benefit dances in our town, where no formal clothing are required, and you can even dance with rubber slippers.

My high school batch 1969 during a reunion.

I loved the contemporary songs of those days as popularized by Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Matt Monroe, The Bee Gees, the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Del Shannon, Cat Stevens. I learned many of their songs from my high school friends. I also participated in school singing contests.

Our subject in agriculture allowed us to learn about planting fruit trees and crops at designated areas within the campus. During our four-year stint I enjoyed the fruits of our banana plants at school. Our examinations included cutting grasses at the agricultural areas.

It was during our time that the school was renamed Surigao del Norte National High School. Our teachers were among the best in town, and we truly learned a lot from them in preparation for college education. Among them were Mr. Zoilo Rodriguez, Mr. Rustom Rodriguez and his wife, Mr. Benjamin Quinto, Mr. Rodrigo Doblas, Mr. Sarte, Mr. Fortaliza, Mrs. Durero, Ms. Carmen Silay, Mr. Behagan, Mrs. Irenneta Montinola, Ms. Elsa Eviota, Mrs. Glorina Tremedal, Mr. Guyano, Mr. Uy, 

and Ms. Lugo.

I was good at mathematics and I desired to take civil engineering in college, although I know that my parents could not surely afford. I took and passed the Mindanao State University scholarship examinations, and was offered full scholarship in Agricultural Engineering.  That was the only available scholarship examination conducted in Surigao City. The rest had to be taken either at metropolitan cities or at the university campus.

While the rest of my classmates were filled with excitements as we were qualified for graduation, I was a bit sad because I know my parents could not, during that moment, afford to buy for me a graduation outfit. As I sadly witness my classmates marched at our graduation rites while sitting on the bleacher, I am somehow happy that my name was among those called to receive a high school diploma.