A Little Act of Terror on the First Sunday of Advent

Somebody threw a firecracker at me last night. Yes, a firecracker.

The firecracker blew up close to my abdominal area. I was a bit hurt by the little explosion, but it didn’t leave any noticeable mark on my skin (I guess my growing belly is thick enough). It did leave a conspicuous piece of evidence, though, by tearing the lower part of the shirt I was wearing last night. It was a relatively costly shirt I bought just more than a month ago when my laundry was piling up in the dormitory. The firecracker also almost tore my favorite slim fit jeans.

The incident, which had been boggling me the whole night, happened at around 9:30 pm while I was inside a jeepney coming from SM North EDSA on its way to the UP Campus (I was seated in front of the public utility vehicle and was close to the driver’s seat). It happened along the street connecting Quezon Avenue to the East Avenue—a route where one quite normally sees the pavements crowded by informal settlers, street kids, and more likely, street gangs. Incidentally, it happened in a quite familiar location in what is touted as the richest city in Metro-Manila.

I had been passing by that route in the past few weeks and it was relatively safe until last night. When that little act of terror happened, I was a bit taken aback. That I could actually be a victim of a firecracker was farthest from my mind on the first Sunday of Advent. While I initially felt disgust towards whoever did such an irresponsible act (I suspect it was committed by one of the street kids or a member of a teen gang), I couldn’t get myself to be so furious to the extent of getting off the jeeney, confronting the group of kids along the street, and reporting the incident to the nearest barangay (village) hall.  Besides, I was also afraid something worse might happen to me if I did all that in a zone where I would be treated as the intruder and never as the victim.

When I sniffed the burnt smell on my shirt and felt the hole on it, I began to imagine the worst that could have happened.  The firecracker could have exploded on my face, but thank God, it didn’t. It could have bruised me, but it only burned and tore my more-than-a-month old maroon polo shirt. It could have been a bomb—which is not impossible given the tense political environment in this country—but it was just a firecracker.

And then my mind swirled and twirled and whirled a bit more.

That could not have happened had I stayed put in the dormitory working on and analyzing my texts on a Sunday afternoon. Or I could have been spared from the incident had I opted to take a cab to the campus and paid ten times the jeeney fare (which is ten Philippine pesos). Or the kids or teens wouldn’t have inflicted that little act of terror on a commuter like me if an Efren Penaflorida or a CNN Hero of the Year were in that community keeping the kids busy with books in a pushcart library. Or they wouldn’t even have bothered playing with firecrackers and inflicting discomfort on passersby had there been a Manny Pacquiao boxing event scheduled at that time. Or they wouldn’t be cramping that part of the city had the local and national executives been busy doing their jobs rather than politicking. Or there wouldn’t have been informal settlers and urban poor causing pedestrians and commuters discomfort had the wealth of this country been equitably distributed!

Or, …I think I have digressed too much.

I guess when the Christmas season is fast approaching, such untoward incidents happen more often.  In a country ravaged by poverty and usual elitist indifference, the poor, I suppose, don’t seem to have much of a choice but to inflict little acts of terror in order to rivet attention from those who they perceive to be in more comfortable stations in life. Unfortunately, their victims, more often than not, are those that aren’t that well off—ordinary people who also struggle in the big city.  Because those who are really comfortable are usually shielded from those little acts of terror in their fancy cars, and perhaps, at this time, are just too busy prettifying their swanky houses with glittering Christmas lights.

(5:38 am, Room 4, Bonifacio Hall Dormitory, UP School of Labor and Industrial Relations)