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Menudo Con Amor

Teen Girls Cannonballed Left and Right, and My Clan Came Along. Get Your Mind Out of the Gutter.

By Tricia De Jesus-Gutierrez (Phynne~Belle)Published 4 years ago 7 min read
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Menudo Con Amor
Photo by Kevin Schmid on Unsplash

Our family was the type that took all major trips together. No, don’t get excited just yet—“major” to our family way of thinking was anything that didn’t fall under the realm of day to day traveling: to school, to work, to the grocery store. So nothing like elaborate vacations, or day trips to see the giant redwoods, or camping at the lake, like other families. We did go to Disney land twice as a family. Once, when I was about seven or eight years old, and what I remember from that was my dad riding Space Mountian with me and my sister and enjoying much more than we did. The second time was when my sister and I were young adults. We had brought my then-boyfriend, now ex-husband along on the trip that time. You know, it did turn out to be the Happiest Place on Earth, if you catch my drift. Wink. But that’s a story for another time.

When we moved to the Philippines, this automatically, without question, applied to our extended family. To help you imagine the scope of what this entailed, my dad had seven siblings, six were alive during the time, and five of the brothers and sisters had at least three kids minimum, and about twelve maximum. When we went on these larger scale trips—be they trips to the beach or river, the four hour trek to Manila, for an annual shopping trip, or seeing off a relative at the airport, this required us to bring at least one-half to three-fourths of our brood. That’s a lot of people.

I think to my family as a collective, hive mind that is more often practical than not, taking a trip together in our extremely large numbers is a win-win situation; we can make it a sort of multi-purpose endeavor that can fit in several things into one day and one travel expense. So a typical venture would include the treat, like shopping at the nice modern malls the city had, the fun, maybe going to the zoo or touristy attractions, and then of course, the necessity, which could be anything from purchasing a vehicle to going to the U.S. Embassy or offering emotional support to a cousin traveling abroad on a plane for the very first time. Multitasking at its finest.

When I was around thirteen or fourteen years old, Menudo (the adorable Puerto Rican boy band, not the savory soup with tripe and garbanzos) invaded the Philippines and every teen girl’s heart with their itty-bitty rainbow spandex costumes and their simultaneously gyrating hips. They spoke and sang in Spanish. I didn’t give a hoot, I was in love, stan them forever and a day, all that good stuff that comes with the onset of adolescent hormones and teenybopper romantic fantasies. Before they came I would write them letters on the daily, memorize all the songs on their cassette tapes, buy any merchandise remotely associated with them, and scour the channels for any specials on them.

When it was announced that they would finally make it to the Philippines for the Manila leg of their world tour, which girl do you think cried and cajoled and begged and went into intense dramatics so her parents would shell out the pesos for expensive tickets to see them in concert? THIS GIRL.

Once that was achieved, my parents set upon deciding on the logistics of who would accompany us to the city. Uhh, that would be everyone who wasn’t too old, too young, or infirm. So basically, my whole extended family. They began planning what vehicle and driver to “hire,” and what other activities we could pack in while we were there. I think a jeepney that could squeeze everyone in, dropping by an SM MegaMall, and packing a lunch and camping out to picnic in front of the FAT (Folk Arts Theatre, the venue for the Menudo concert) was settled on. Man, all I wanted was to bypass everything else and camp out in front of the building the whole day, hoping to catch a glimpse of Robi (Draco) Rosa or Ricky Martin. Did we have to haul the whole clan along? We did. Done deal. No negotiating.

By Yannes Kiefer on Unsplash

We headed out as we were normally inclined to do before the sun rose, and by breakfast we made it to our favorite rest stop, the town of Taal, where we could gulp down our kapeng Barako and munch on some pan de sal with cheese while staring at the then-dormant itsy-bitsy volcano we were proud to call our own wonder of the world.

By later morning, we were mingling in pollution, traffic, and chaos with crazy Manila drivers on the congested thoroughways, and by noon, my family was hoarding as much bargain goodies as they could find at a big box shopping complex, my sister replenishing her collection of books from National Bookstore, while I moped and copped an attitude, moaning that we were wasting our time and that the band would probably be setting up, and I was the only girl in the universe missing out on my chance of catching Draco’s eye, resulting in a whirlwind courtship and wedding. I was beginning to believe we would never leave the mall, and I would be for some reason, not admitted into the concert hall, when the adults decided they’d had enough of shopping and herded us all to sardine back up in the jeepney.

My heart was in my throat, and my throat was somewhere down by my feet as we approached the location, and I was filled with a mixture of emotion: barely contained excitement that the day had finally come, we were finally here, and I would get to see my beloved group, battling hard still with that teen-brought-up-in-the boonies hiya that we were rolling up in a dusty open air jeepney, with a cargo of cranky, disheveled people, passing these Manileña girls in their authentic Menudo merch, sitting tranquil and clean in their air conditioned cars with only their chauffeur as silent company. I got over it soon enough as the driver of the jeepney parked a little farther away from the other vehicles, and made to dash across the pavement waving my ticket as soon as the jeepney stopped.

My parents had other ideas. Since my dad would be accompanying my sister and me in to the theatre as our chaperone, everyone (but me!) agreed to break out dinner and nosh in the parking lot before hand, since it would be too late to do so when we got out later. Good idea, yeah, sure. But not for me! I just wanted to be in the line of screaming girls, screaming along with them at any car that appeared like it might contain our idols.

Time is agonizingly slow when it is the only thing between you and what you dreamed of for so long (ok, time, and my hungry family), but we did make it to the line in time. We did make it into the FAT. We were sitting in amazing seats. It was magical—I came, I saw, I probably contributed to my daddy’s hearing loss by screaming next to him at impossible decibels.

We did go to see the group again a few years later, this time at the Araneta Coliseum, but surprisingly with a smaller entourage. I still loved them, but the excitement was less intense this time. I had by that time obsessed over other celebrities and developed other crushes—realistic and fantastical. My mania over Menudo subsided eventually, like all adolescent dreamscapes do. My affection for Draco Rosa survived adulthood.

Now that I am older, I think I’m sometimes struck by nostalgia—those trips on jeepneys with my extended family flowering out of windows and piled atop each other are only happy memories now.

Notes:

-The Philippine Peso (PHP) is the Philippines official currency.

-The Folk Arts Theatre, FAT, now called the Tanghalang Francisco Balagtas, was originally created as the venue for the 1974 Miss Universe Pageant and was a popular venue for concerts in the 1980s.

-The SM (ShoeMart) Mega Mall is one of the complexes of the Philippines first middle class, modern shopping experience.

-Taal is a small town in the province of Batangas, and home to one of the world’s smallest active volcanos, Bulkang Taal.

-Kapeng Barako is a rich, dark coffee varietal grown in the Batangas and Cavite provinces. “Barako” means “stud,” alluding to masculinity.

-Pan de Sal is a savory-sweet oval loaf of bread, a popular breakfast item among Filipinos.

-National Bookstore was the Philippine premier bookstore in the 1980s, housing several floors and sections of books; a book lover‘s dream.

-While the word hiya may roughly translate as embarrassment or shame, the uniquely Filipino concept is more about propriety and respect and finding sense of self. It is giving, presenting, and saving face to be amiable.

-A Manileña literally translated is a native resident of the Metro Manila area, but there is a secondary connotation of being more cosmopolitan, sophisticated, and well-off than her countryside and small town distant cousin, the Probisyana, your homegrown Filipina country bumpkin.

-The Araneta Coliseum is the Philippines’ largest multipurpose indoor sports arena.

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About the Creator

Tricia De Jesus-Gutierrez (Phynne~Belle)

Poet Organizer of Phynnecabulary and Co-Director at the Poetry Global Network. Has too many cats and dogs a-plenty. Enjoys karaoke way too much. https://linktr.ee/phynnebelle/

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