That One Summer

Prologue

Prologue

I didn't grow up like all those other teenagers in the world. I don't go to parties or hang-out with friends frequently but we do go out sometimes. For us, that is what we call normal. With all the things we do, there is not a thing that we feel weird about. Because this is us.

In other countries, the top problem they have is being knocked up by some strangers or their boyfriends. But we, people from the Philippines, value our virtues. We don't go sleep around. We still do the traditional way of giving up our virtues after marriage. At least most of us do.

I never expect myself to have a normal life because I never have normal people surrounding me.

I'm adopted by these Chinese people where they love me to death. But most of the time we argue non-stop cause of our age difference. They can be counted as my grandparents. Most of our arguments are because they don't understand our generations. It's like they're still stuck in their own time where all children are being thoroughly disciplined and acted like complete angels. No matter how many times I tell them that the world has already changed for the past decades, they still hold on to the fact that we, the 21st century children, should act like them. They don't know the fact that the society now is completely different that made us different from who they are. Being a teenager is the hardest stage in life. We are always misunderstood. They treat us like children but expect us to act like an adult.

So maybe they did try their best to raise us but I don't think that they raised us in a right way. I'm not saying that their bad parents. All I'm saying is that they shouldn't raise us like we are children from their time. I know that their parents are pretty much strict ones where if you do something bad, you should be punished right away. So when we were little, if we disobey something or do something wrong, they would hit us with a stick to show us that what we did was wrong. They didn't even think about telling us in a more non-violent way.

So that explains much of my brother's rebel ways. He fails most of his subjects and every summer he would have summer class. He ends up with the wrong group of peers and gets into a lot of fights. But me, on the other hand, tries to be the golden child. I just 'try', you know. Sure, I don't get into fights and get good grades but I still rebel sometimes. That's why I said I try to be their perfect child. I don't want to add more worries to our parents. My brother is already a super pain in their asses and I don't want to be an addition so I do my best to be a great model to my younger brother. I study hard to get the high grades I'm currently having. I make friends to everyone but by my luck, most of my friends are on the honor roll and have a clean record. So you could consider me a goody-two-shoes.

I go to this private school in the city next to ours that is only fifteen minutes away by car. In this private school, we not only learn English and Tagalog but also Chinese in the afternoon. Our classes last until 4:30 in the afternoon. We are required to wear these awful uniforms, too. I don’t know how other fashionable students tend to pull-off their looks on these white button-up polo and dark blue skirts. Those girls must be really gifted with good looks or they are related to the goddesses. All my eleven years of going to this school, I try to pull-off a decent look in our hideous uniform but it just doesn’t work for me. I really, really hate uniforms.

Carrying on, after reading so many stories of how other teenagers in the world live their teen lives, I begin to feel envious about them. Sure do, in our school there are also cocky varsity players, bitchy but sometimes-plastic-nice dancers and cheerleaders and some nerds with social life but it can’t be compared to the lives of other teenagers around the world. We don’t do crazy things like drinking underage. So when someone does that we all are like ‘Wow, he’s so cool and blah blah blah’. It’s not normal for us to be that rebellious. We don’t throw parties at our houses when our parents are not home. We don’t sleep around like whores. So you could say that we are pretty much disciplined. Or are we?

Because we aren’t able to do these crazy things in our teen lives, where the stage of life where we rebel, we are aching to do it. We want to burst out from our bubbles and explore the real world.

So when I got the opportunity to do all these kinds of things, I didn’t hesitate anymore. It was that one summer that changed a part of me. It changed on how I look at the world. It changed my impression of the society, where I learned that not all people can be easily trusted. The real world where our parents are trying to protect us from is far worse than we think it was. They shouldn’t have let us depend on them so much because there is one point in time where we need to solve our own problems that they can’t do anything to help.

Who could’ve thought that a three-month summer for me would change my whole perspective about life . . . and love?

It was just that one summer.