Back in the Day: Two Pesos

Do you know what the conversion rate of two Philippine pesos into U.S. currency is today? It is about the equivalent of four cents. That being: four tarnished zinc-copper pennies, four pieces chucked in a tip jar, four bits of change picking up lint at the bottom of your pocketbook. It is four do-you know-which-U.S.-President-gives-good-face, full-on moue, in-profile, nice-beard on a one cent coin? Hint: number sixteen. He delivered the Gettysburg Address. You know, the one that went: “four scores and seven years ago...”

...but no, back to two pesos equals four cents. Can you imagine how much this amount was in the late eighties? The reason I bring it up, is because this was my periodic allowance during elementary school and part of secondary, to stretch over the course of a few days to a week, depending on what my parents could afford to give me, that calculation regularly tempered by the maths equation of Filipino matipid multiplied by the Amerikanong respect of the value of a buck earned.

Two pesos did not buy anything, not even back in the day. Pizza slice: three pesos. Hair gel, the good kind? Probably six pesos. Pretty scented stationery and Hello Kitty erasers. Couldn’t even consider it.

Okay, so street food like fish balls and sago’t gulaman, a sugary gelatin drink, were one peso a-piece. Yahoo for that. If you were imagining that there was a lot of these cheap street vendor bought snacks keeping me satiated in my youth, you are entirely correct. It’s never a wise idea to send a starving teen past lunch period to balance on her wobbly Catholic knees and possibly pass out during prayer hour in church, or to battle statistics and trigonometry, unfed. Eat something, anything, just to get by until the end of day bell goes off, and you can hurry home to fill your poor constricting belly with rice, steamed greens, and smoked fish.

My poor parents were never aware that what they proudly provided me with, for my baon, could not wrap me up warmly in nourishment, in nice things that young girls who could, liked to taunt cash strapped girls who couldn’t. How were they expected to know how two pesos couldn’t buy me enough of a hold inside a life I lived daily for eight years, but only managed to wedge my unwieldy being into sideways, only ever halfway in?

My classmates were all baffled at how poor I appeared; they equated American citizenship with having green dollar bill budding from every crevice, nice clothes, book bags, and patent leather shoes, not ever thinking that a retired Navy man’s pension bought necessities and security, not excess.

I never told my parents that sometimes I skipped lunch and saved up my money to augment the next allowance. I never told them that sometimes I would skip several lunches in a row to show up one day to school with a nice ribbon in my hair, or Sanrio notebooks. I never wished them to feel that they didn’t do enough, but I was ashamed of being so peso-and-centavo deficient, all the same.

Glossary

Matipid: thrifty

Amerikanong: American

Sago’t gulaman: a sweet drink made from syrup, with gelatinous pearls.

Tricia De Jesus-Gutierrez is a San Francisco Bay Area poet, podcaster, and blogger. To find out more of what she is creating, go to her Ko-fi page.