My son Ben, 11, asks the most curious questions.
When he was little he asked me, “Mommy, when you were a kid, did you use feathers to write?”
“No Ben, Mommy’s not that old. We had pens and pencils.”
Another time: “Mommy, when you were a kid, was the world black and white?”
“No Ben, some were sepia. (just kidding!!) We had color. Only TVs, movies, and pictures were black and white.”
Then one night Ben says, “Mommy, why do I feel like this happened already?”
“What happened?” I ask him.
“You and me sitting here. It happens to me sometimes. Like something that’s happening happened already.”
“Ben, that’s what they call Déjà Vu—the feeling that something already happened.”
Hard to explain.
Back in the ’80s, during one of those summers, my family was staying at the Hyatt Terraces Baguio
I was a scrawny little kid with glasses and curly hair. I remember grabbing a hairbrush, standing on the bed while facing the mirror and lipsyncing this song on the cassette player. I closed my eyes, feeling the moment.
You could say I was already a gay man at that time…
I was halfway through the song when I opened my eyes and saw a roomboy/housekeeper standing by the door and holding a stacking of towels with his mouth hanging open.
I swear to God, I wanted the earth to swallow me up like Ricky Lo interviewing Anne Hathaway.
I don’t remember what I did to get out of that situation, but I survived. And now whenever Déjà Vu comes to mind I think of a hairbrush, a bed, and a roomboy with a stack of towels….
Originally published at Chuvaness.com. You can comment here or there.