I have a Swede friend, Rico--who was once a hardcore dogman but now turned Buddhist--who said, "Never estimate the predictability of stupidity." I thought it was one of the stupidest one-liners I've ever heard at the time, but recently I have serendipitously discovered its deep wisdom.
A couple of weeks ago, I was tricked by my wife to take along my father-in-law with me when I renew the car registration certificate at the LTO. My wife is a very smart little lady. She said it was our chance to bond. I was thinking, "Bond? Who the hell wants to bond with his father in law? Immediately, I thought of two kinds of guys: 1.The Suck-up, and 2. The Plastic-man. I am neither. On an afterthought, I realized that even these two don't really want to bond with them in-laws. The first wants something in return, usually capable of being expressed in terms of money, and the second principally operates on a pretext based on a lie. Clearly, no married male in their right minds would want to "bond" with their father-in-law.
My wife's old man said to me, "Jorge, kailangan maglagay tayo para mabilis."
I said "Uhm, okay." But then when he was not looking, I was shaking my head and smirking. I'm not implying that I am 100% corruption-free. Hell, it's sad to admit but its part of Flip culture. Deeply ingrained in our society is the tendency to cut the red-tape by slipping in some extra cash sub rosa. Nevertheless, the thought of my own father popped-up in my head. My father is the kind of classic old-school guy who would not think of making a bribe unless there is absolutely no other way around it only whenever he really needs something important done real quick without too much hassle. Simply renewing a car's registration papers is definitely not one of those things. If he founds out that I did that, he'd probably shake his head just like I did, and add that deplorable act to his list of my life's disappointments.
Once, when I was fifteen (15), I faked my age to get a student driver's license. One was required to be sixteen (16) to get one of those. One of my uncle's truck drivers was my accomplice for that particular bad deed. He was blind in one eye and had a professional driver's license. Just imagine what would happen if he went through the regular procedure in getting driver's licenses. The medical examiner would go, "cover your right eye and read to me the letters you see on that poster..." Later on, my father found out about it and although I cannot recall at this time the precise contents of his sermon, I am definitely sure that there was a long and onerous one. Perhaps it just came to the right ear and out the left.
So me and the old man went in there, walked through a line longer than one on the first day of Marian Rivera's new movie. And no, I did not watch it, I just saw the line at the local SM mall near where I live. He started unusually politely talking to this bespectacled fat lady, who looked like a villain who popped-out of an anti-corruption poster. She had these old-fashioned rimmed glasses on, thick stockings failing to disguise the tree-trunks she had for legs, and from the looks of it, a big chubby pencil stuck-up her ass. The old man just gave all my car papers to this lady and told me to chuck the cash discreetly to her desk. The price was a few hundred Pesos more than that legally required. Somewhat feeling like a crook, I shoved the wad of cash to her desk and she told us to wait outside and wait for her call.
Since me and my wife just got recently married, she had to go through the business of changing her last name to mine's. The Civic was in still in her maiden name because at the time we bought it, we were not yet married. So I told the fat-assed LTO lady the story and asked asked her "Miss, how can we change the name on the registration papers?" She had all sorts of answers but none of them were making sense to me. I rephrased my question and asked, "Do you have a procedure on how my wife can change the name reflected on the registration papers?" Finally, and seemingly out of thin air, she gave me this answer "you have to execute a deed of sale..." As a rather annoying habit of mine, probably inherited from my father, and reinforced by some law school professors I had, I shake my head from left to right repititiously on instinct whenever I hear a wrong answer. My wife is really pissed off whenever I do that thing to her.That moment, I had no idea I was doing it. The lady, on a tone, said "Don't shake your head Mister, it's as though like you're looking down on me!"
That got on my nerve, to say the least. I broke all politeness protocol and said "Look, Miss, what you are telling me is totally wrong, one person cannot sell a thing to him or herself. In the eyes of the law, that is not a valid sale. As a graduate of law (with stress on "graduate" and "law" so she can hear perfectly), I will not and can not do that in good conscience." Hearing that, I could see her expression from something really snooty and sinister common to most government employees who think they are doing ordinary citizens tremendous favors by doing their jobs, to something more pleasant and a little bit scared and apologetic at the same time.
As I was blurting all that shit that out, I felt my soul flew outside of my body and I was looking at myslef arguing with some nincompoop. I quickly came back inside my body and smoothly came up with a fake apology. She said that that's the way they do it whenever they encounter situations identical to my wife's and then she also conjured a fake apology of her own. With that, I thought, "fuck it, let's just let the papers be as they are, I have no patience for this." So I went outside, lit a smoke and started to wait for our 2008 sticker to issue.The old man with me was left inside, probably apologizing profusely to the fat lady for my unruly behavior.
True enough, the padulas we gave cut down the time we were engaged to wait. After a little over thirty (30) minutes, My wife's maiden name was being called, and the rest of the honest sumbitches who had been waiting for half a day since morning still had their asses stuck outside the LTO office praying to God to make the assholes inside call their names so they can get the fuck out of that shitty place.
No comments:
Post a Comment