The night I almost died

Last Saturday night, I had the scare of my life. While driving from Manila on the stretch of the national highway in Barangay Bacag in Villasis town, the owner-type jeep I was following sideswiped a tricycle on the left side of the road after the tricycle attempted to overtake a vehicle in front of it.

On impact, the tricycle tumbled and rolled. Seeing the collision and hearing the crashing sound of steel, I instinctively swerved to the road shoulder and reduced my speed. But in the process, the tumbling tricycle still hit my van, just behind the driver’s seat and crushed its sliding glass windows.

I was shaking when I realized we were hit and I could only think of my two boys, who had hitchhiked for a sight-seeing trip to Manila. But as it turned out, both of them were alright.

I thought I was even seeing things as I tried to evade the collision. What appeared in front of me was a flying tire, probably the spare tire of the owner-type jeep, and I had braced myself for its impact on the van’s windshield. Fortunately, it hit the ground quickly, just a few inches away from us.

At the Villasis Police Station later that night, I learned that the owner-type jeep I was following lost control on impact and crashed into a bus following the tricycle. The jeep driver and his baby son, died. The tricycle driver died, too.

I have not actually recovered yet from that frightening experience. Everytime it comes to mind, I shudder. And I can only thank God that we were spared.

*****

On our way home from the grocery store one weekend, I was surprised to hear my three-year-old daughter singing what sounded like a Chinese song.

I knew she understood not even one word of what she was singing but she was enjoying it anyway and she was singing it with feeling.

It was then that I learned that she has been watching a Taiwanese soap opera, which to my surprise, has been aired on television for many months now. I also found out that even her older siblings have been “addicted” to that show that they have never missed a single episode of it.

As a child, I watched cartoons and Batibot, an educational TV show that eventually stopped airing for lack of funding. There was also Sesame Street, but the Tagalog-speaking puppets appealed to me more than Big Bird and Ernie.

For a while, I thought my younger children were hooked on Barney and my teenagers, on MTV. Now, they have all seemed to have “graduated” from these shows and prefer instead to watch these Taiwanese soap operas, just like everybody else in the whole country.

Maybe, it is the soundtrack of these shows. Or maybe, the story. I remember that in the mid-1970’s, a Japanese cartoon, Voltes V, was a big hit that then President Marcos had to prohibit its airing apparently because the show had adverse influence on children.

The cartoon’s Japanese soundtrack, however, eventually became a big hit, making it as No. 1 song for many weeks in the American Top 40 charts at that time.

Perhaps, there is really something in us Filipinos that easily makes us attracted to foreign soap operas, cartoons and movies. (Remember Marimar? It was a Mexican tele-novela that everyone loved to watch.)

But whatever this something is, I do not know. Maybe, it is an effect of our 300 years of Spanish domination. Or a product of American influence on our country.

Honestly, I really do not know.

ENDNOTES:
QUOTE: "If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced."-- Vincent Van Gogh