What an Old Wallet Held

As I sat in my room thinking of where to start for this particular blog, I thought that I would never find anything good in here. As I’ve probably explained to many our colleagues, I’ve only been living in the United States for around two and a half years. I haven’t been able to accumulate a lot of interesting things in my closet so I was a little worried that I won’t have much material to write about. Nevertheless, I soldiered on. And to my surprise, after a very brief run through of my closet, I opened my desk drawer and found a very old wallet. Perhaps it’s not the most interesting object to talk about since everyone has an old wallet. But, this particular brown, knock-off, Levi’s wallet held inside it objects that reminded me of my “wild” days back home.

Conveniently hidden in one of the wallet’s pockets, I found several ripped frontsides of cigarette packs with dates and names of places scribbled on them. One of them, the front of what I think was an imported pack of mentholated Marlboro Lights, survived the couple of years being stuck in my old wallet better than the rest. When I initially saw it, I thought of all the times me and my friends would just sit around in one of the conveniently close bar/restaurants in front of our college while we waited for classes to start. We’d buy a pack of cigarettes, share it with any of us who were there, and boom, instant hunger suppressant and conversation starter. It was such a release for us. I’ve quit smoking since I moved here, partially because of its ridiculous costs but mostly because of health reasons. And I promised some of the most important people in my life that I would. But when I look back at smoking, it’s not the nicotine rush I remember. I remember my friends back home, and all the things we did when we were younger.

The date that I scribbled on that particular "frontside" was 10/16/05-10/19/05. Above it was the word “Laguna” and a special smiley face that I drew. It’s a normal smiley face but with its tongue sticking out. It looks like it was going “pbbttt!” complete with spit. “Laguna” is hard to explain, mostly because I can’t retell half of the things that happened there without risking some embarrassment (and perhaps persecution???). However, what I can say is that it was one of the best times of my life. Sure, it included a lot of imbibing of spirits, and smoking cigarette after cigarette, headaches, and broken chairs, it was three days spent with comrades that I still hold close to my heart. We were young and (quite foolishly and naively) had not a single care in the world. All we cared about was having a good time with good friends. Maria and I (yes Maria from my essay was there) coined this term, “Good friends, good times, good vibes.” It sounds cheesy, sort of like something you’d hear as a beer slogan. But it was our slogan for the rest of the year… maybe even the rest of the time I lived in the Philippines.