On Tuesday of the week to come, school classes would be ongoing again after a summerthat was just so ideal to me; where the sun wasn’t as fiery as in years past and the weather wasn’t as scorching as many summers ago. Oh, how I remember some terrible summers where the weather was so blistering that I couldn’t stay at home without sweating profusely, and to make matters worst, those horrifying summers came when brownouts pervaded throughout the country. It’s like adding salt to wound. It was just sickening. It had actually made me condone FVR’s indiscretion with the alleged unfair IPP contracts. Or else, those summers would have been so hellish that anyone would have sold his or her soul to the devil just to have cold water in the fridge and a swirling electric fan.

But this time, the summer’s sun was just cool and easy as if the season had not changed at all from the cold December days. Many said that the greenhouse effect is making global temperature rise tremendously although I feel that the opposite is happening. It’s becoming colder even on summers instead of the other way around. I don’t know in other places, but here in Zamboanga, the air can get real chilly at some nights. Maybe, as a result of so much carbon dioxide in the air, ice in the north and south pole continues to melt as each minute ticks, and as a result, such melting process brings cold wind from the northern hemisphere into the equator region, where countries like the Philippines is situated.

But so much of the weather already, I was just chattering about school being about nearly to open. My eldest child, SefSef is finally entering first grade in the elementary and that means, he is already about to embark on “formal school” and not merely kindergarten or nursery. This is where it all really begins, where the real quest for knowledge actually begins. Well of course, the gaining of knowledge actually starts from the minute an infant first opened his or her eyes to this mortal world. I just mean to say here that ordinarily, formal education begins at first grade.

For my first son, I am fairly excited as a father, wondering somehow whether or not he could similarly have those joyous moments as I had as a grade school student, as he now enters the grounds of the school where he begins an almost lifelong pursuit of knowledge, where the pursuit of knowledge is never-ending; as long as we breathe this mortal air. And of course, as I fully believe, and perhaps as you would also, knowledge is such a treasure that no amount of money could ever equate and once you have it, no one---not even the President of the United States of America---could ever take it away from you.

Those initial moments I entered the grounds of my first school I had cherished so much that reminiscing about them is like inhaling a soothing balm that calms the spirit.

Now this reminiscing brings me back to one memorable episode in my early school days. I was in fourth grade then at the Zamboanga West Central School, a public school situated nearly in the middle of the city, just in front of Carmen Street where I spent most of my childhood days. At that time, I was already living with my grandfather (who took me in as his most favorite grandchild).

And so one afternoon, I suddenly found out that I completely ran out of money at school, leaving nothing even for my fare towards home. Home now means about seven to nine kilometers away from school. So I really had no choice but to walk home. At that very young age, I still didn’t know how to ask some loan or to borrow some money from anyone. I had no inkling about such thing at all. I don’t even know then where and whom to approach. Maybe my classmates had some money left in their pocket or maybe my teachers could help me get back home. Nevertheless, I just decided to walk the very far distance from school, from right in the middle of the city (almost) and towards Guiwan which at that time was still considered as part of the city outskirt—unlike today, where as a result of urban expansion, the outskirts ain’t that far anymore.

So I remember this one afternoon where I felt so much tiredness walking for moments that seem to last for eternity. The distance was just too far that every step I made does not seem to bring me closer towards my destination, like it was a futile exercise. At every turn, I would stop and take some deep breath and hope that home was nearer. But it was always too far still. There were some moments where I would look at the sky and ask some entity that I thought was there---perhaps the Almighty God Himself---and asked why those things had to happen to me. Does it have to happen to me? Do I deserve this very sickening inconvenience? What have I done to deserve this?

But luckily, just when I was some halfway towards my destination, after having walked about five kilometers, a tricycle with no one on it suddenly stop near where I was walking and asked if where I was going. I said I was going to Aurora Village, at Barrio Guiwan. He said that he had seen me walking about one hour ago and that up to that time, I was still walking. He wondered loudly why a very young child like me (I was about nine years old then) could be walking such length. I intimated to him in a very meek tone---after realizing that he could be of help--- that I had lost my fare money and I had no choice but to walk back home, no matter how far it was. He said something like I must have been crazy to ever walk such great distance and then he instructed me to hopped in into his tricycle and he would deliver me towards my destination. I said that I didn’t have any money to pay him. The driver said to never mind it.

And so I had a free ride that I couldn’t forget up to this time, one that I would always be grateful for even up to now, and perhaps for the rest of my life. You could say that the tricycle driver acted like a Good Samaritan to me and he just gave me great relief because just when I was about to give up walking from so much tiredness, some kindred soul came to my aid.

The world is still a better place when Good Samaritans are still abound.