A Tale of 6 Wannabee Gangsters

1982 was a good year to start something, anything. Six sophomore kids decided they’ll be a force to reckon with, age no withstanding, in campus.

And so we started to make a name. On top of the heap was Caloy De Guzman, followed by Arnold Motos. Next would be Ramil Olayres. Distant fourth would be me, followed by two equally short-fused guys namely Anthony Armabulo and Amado Ngo. We have a seventh member, Garry Gonzales, our glamour boy. But somehow, he got lost in the maze. We never heard from him after our junior year.

We were never really the terroristic type, we just didn’t give any turf we thought we owned. We were the go-to guys when other friends were in trouble, big or small. Most of the encounters would fall on Caloy and Anoy. Ramil was not really a starter but couldn’t be hit either. He’ll explode in a zip! I had my share of those, probably about 2 major, the rest minor and are easily patched up among the protagonists.

Lots of people-family, friends and peers, thought that we were a bunch of lost or at the very least, troubled souls. At some time, we probably thought so too. But we were happy with what we do, we never really thought of it too seriously. We were just a bunch of happy kids coasting thru our high school and finish it, if at all.

Once we entered college, we sort of fell off the grid. We never got to be as a group again after that. I maintained a constant communication with Caloy, we being neighbors in Tondo and also provincemates here in Rizal. But for the last 5 years or so, we lost contact too.

I bumped to Anoy once in a while, being also a neighbor of sort on the other side of the railroad tracks. But once I joined the workforce, we never got to talked again. I would meet him again, turns out for the last time, in 2004, after about a 14-year lay-off.

Ramil, on the other hand, would become a neighbor of my mother in our old house in Solis sometime in the mid 90’s. We met twice in the streets but couldn’t really talk that long as both of us were on our way to work. After that, we get to talk, albeit very sparingly rare, only here at FB.

As for Jing and Anthony, I never really touched base again with them up until today. But I have heard that both of them are doing well. Glad to know that.

Because of our reputation in school, most of the batch has written us off. They thought that we only have 3 places to end up with-Hospital (Good), Jail (Better) or Cemetery (Best). I wouldn’t blame them, we really were that notorious back then, but only if you got into trouble to us or one of our friends. Otherwise, we never really terrorize anyone on a whim. It has to have a reason before we act on it.

Good thing we didn’t fare bad after all. Caloy is a seafarer and have toured the world a number of times, he may be sick and tired of it. Arnold was a Shift Supervisor at a Panasonic plant in Sta. Rosa, Laguna. Ramil is working for a big consumer product distribution company. I went on to become a banker all my professional life. Jing, I heard of is working abroad. Anthony, eventually became and still is a Barangay Kagawad in his hometown. Somehow, us wannabee gangsters found redemption after all. We finally found our place under the sun.

Last Wednesday, I got the jolt of my high school flashback days-found out Anoy has passed away. Wasn’t so sure, or maybe I never wanted to be assured that he really died, until Josie Arambulo confirmed it to me. Only then it sunk in to me that a comrade has died. For the first time, I really didn’t know how to feel about it. I have been to a number of wakes of a friend’s this and that but never to a wake of a friend. This is the first time for me and when I went there yesterday, it was so surreal. It’s like seeing a time of my life sucked out. We were just kids a few years back and now he left a bunch of kids of his own. Just too untimely.

I haven’t talked to any of our bunch except to Ramil. I sent him a PM telling him we should all meet and pay our last respect to a friend, collectively, if possible. I guess some things get in the way as the idea hasn’t bore fruit yet but I’m keeping my hopes alive it will, no matter how pressed up we are as time is ticking away so fast.

We may have forgotten to say hello to each other through the years but as I found out today, true friends never really die. They just fade away in memory. Anytime you need them, you can always retrieve them back.

It was heartening to know, nearly made me cry, that Anoy’s wife, whom I never met before until yesterday, knows me by name. So did she remembers Caloy, Ramil and as she puts it, “yung nakatira sa Balut”, meaning Jing and Anthony. Turns out Anoy keeps telling his kids of our exploits and foibles then, and of increasing frequency, lately before he died.

I’d be too silly to say that I never shed a tear writing this, my eyes welled and I’ll never be ashamed of it. And if it’s my way of remembering and mourning a friend, I’d be the first to say, I am happy I did.

Take your rest now, pal. You deserve it.