so, here comes summer..the official season for perfect meetings for "libreng tuli"...blahahaha!!!

how can you determine someone is already a man!? one answers,"syempre, dapat tuli ka na!"

o--kay, so not exactly my idea of an answer, but that'll do..i guess... In this country, a boy meets manhood through the process of "tuli"..the time when this common subject of a boy runs around either a hospital..((i dunno exactlly..i mean, have I visited an actual operation before!?))screaming his lungs off, plunges into the nearest safe place where no one can see him, clutching over his underwear and his shorts, sweating buckets and fear overwhelming his mind and body...

oh, you see this scene very commonly..and when you are a mother, yourself, you don't furrow your brows just to express your.."Wha--?!".. Out of the 200 boys lining up for a free operation, 40% runs before the operation and succeeds doing so, 50% actually runs, but still he gets "tuli-fied", and 10% are ever so brave upon this, and then, 100% are all nervous doing it..

i actually can not imagine how this works..i mean, a hospital overcrowded with hundreds of mothers, holding onto their son's hands, fathers outside standing like saying, "Sheesh, all this fuss.." and some snapping at their sons to do this at once, and if not, he will do it himself..well..

if this boy won't do it..then, you wait until you are sixteen, and looking at those boys gaping at him, others whispering "Aah, ang tanda na nito..". You wouldn't want that, would you?! Take the risk. Would you like to go home, with your aunties making you like a laughing stock just because you backed out?! Now, that, i ask you.

i can't help but snicker when my brother was walking around the house with the largest, most comfortable, dress my mother could find..sometimes he cries in pain, and my job is to call my father that he is now suffering the illness of the word "nangangamatis".. Sheesh.. weeks from those, i didn't have the appetite to eat kamatis.. He is always lying in the bed, feeling as useless as he is.. without an underwear..

at least he didn't chicken out, right?!

now that's the whole concept of this process that it is called "bahagi ng pagbibinata".

you are called a man, if you face fears, if you have faith, if you contain courage, if you possess charity, if you have hope.

just in this tuli thingy, like, you are a ten-year old boy, already going on in an operation which actually involve your most ever tender spot...you are now facing your biggest fear...THE REMOVING OF THE TENDERNESS OF YOUR TENDER SPOT.

you try to have faith on the doctor who is going to carry this process, you trust him with this, you trust him to take GOOD care of this...you PLEASE him NOT to screw this crap of an operation up..

you contain courage just by bravely walking inside the room with all the courage you can think of, "i am not afraid of that big pointy thing heading my way.." you contain this courage just by lying patiently and not running, accepting things that should be..

if you possess charity, you feel pity, for others who just can't do it..you show them by being patient that everything will be alright, and they will not regret doing it, so in turn, you help them with your encouraging words "The big pointy thing does NOT hurt."

you have hope on your mother, your father, your cousins((if ever they are with you)) that this process is not to be resented, that you are dragged to have this operation not because you are having you punishment for all your wrong doings, but for your health and good, too, right!?

just by simply looking at this boy walking in the  middle of the neighborhood without his underwear and is wearing an oversized t-shirt makes a tear drop out of your now-puffy eyes...you say..

"a boy is ready to meet manhood"

----weird topic.