SLEEP ON IT!: ‘Footfalls’

“FOOTFALLS” is a short story with its main character, Boaz Negro, whom I admire for his sense of recognition that was beyond question. Wilbur Daniel Steele, a US author and playwright presented the former as an aged cobbler who was a happy man despite being blind. Boaz recognized people through their footsteps!

My gratitude goes to one of the most brilliant and efficient mentors I was blessed to have in High School at Our Lady of The Pillar Academy in Ma-ao Barrio who instilled to me The Love of Literature, Mrs. Bernadette Malunes Somcio! SALUD🖖 ” Footfalls” left an imprint too vivid not to mention, not to share and not to use as a title to this write up!

Even before I was attacked by cataract and glaucoma on both my eyes December of 2017, my other senses were already intensified for at a month old, I was a victim of a car accident with my mother who was carrying me that time. My eyes were affected from the impact of the bump that at three years old, I was made to wear glasses. The nerves of my eyes became weak that caused me to become crossed eyed! My waterloo since childhood for I was sheltered like a prisoner for I just watched children playing on the streets from the windowsill of my grandma’s room where I was raised. This happened for fear that I might stumble and the glass on my spectacles would break and would shatter in my eyes! Unlike at present when plastic and other materials can be used, real glass was what my spectacles were made of until I was in grade school! Oh! Yes! I could hear better than others! Haha! Footfalls, indeed!

It was a few days after the opening of classes and I was writing some notes on the blackboard. A boy at the end of my schoolroom announced, ” Oh! My! Our teacher’s penmanship is so unimpressive!” (believe me when spoken in dialect, it is brutally irritating haha) Well, I just went on writing until I was done with the note I needed to teach them, then, slowly, I faced the class and calmly stated, ” This is to remind you, class, that this is an English Class and we are not in a competition of penmanships!” Then again, I heard that boy from the back, ” Huh! Ma’am really heard me?!!” “Haha You and your big mouth!”, my mind spoke in silence, haha!

One day, grandma asked me to call someone to convince her to buy the quilt she has finished sewing as we were running out of funds. So, I did, but the person who answered my call told me to wait awhile as she would call the person concerned. What I heard was, ” Who is calling?”, then the one holding the receiver said, ” The Cross-eyed!” Thinking it did not matter, I did not hear any reprimand from the other end, so, when I got the chance I said with emphasis, “That was a very nice description of me!” I and my ears!!! Haha and there was a momentary silence at the other end!

The night was so quiet and everyone was asleep! Since our rooms were situated at the second floor, it was a bit off for people to hear soft sounds upstairs. As a light sleeper, I, however; am easily awaken to strange sounds and that night was not an exemption! I heard the crunched of the dried leaves being stepped on and immediately, I whispered to my partner who was already in dreamland. He slowly went downstairs, and he saw the man who was snooping at the restroom’s broken window! When he called out the name of the culprit, the latter, ran away as fast as he stepped on the brown crispy leaves on the ground outside of the house! Haha! See? How a sensory intensifies to augment what was and is lost which plays magic when the need arises!

The smell! I mean like a little sister to a dog, haha the sense of smelling at times puts me in a trap! While I am usually the first to feel the sniff of a scent, my partner at most says that he does not experience the same! Hahaha Good thing if it is pleasant, then enjoyment follows, yet when smoke comes from burnt dried leaves with sprinkle of rubber, then, pneumonia will reoccur.! The reek coming from the cooking stints of the neighborhood is another thing that suffocates!

– Talking of pneumonia, it was one time when a neighbor who went on a trip sprayed insecticide in their area which caught me off guard when I opened our kitchen door and was able to inhale the irritant. Thus, it caused severe headache and chills! I thought that was my end for pneumonia weakened me!

– When I was still schooling, even if some mischiefs distorted my ways especially in high school, cheating has never played its tricks on me for I would rather hand in an empty piece of paper than get the answers in a negative magical way! It was never my fault though when someone whispered the answers or announced the answers unconsciously and I thought in my mind they were the right answers, then I smiled to myself for I got to fill in the numbers with what were expected, haha! Peace be to the whisperers for my hearing is a gift in exchange for these problematic eyes!

Once in a page in my memoirs I had a rift with somebody. Silence loomed between us, but the nosy siblings who were prying intently and who did not investigate the root of the conflict just meddled! While I was doing something in complete peace, one of the meddlers told the gang, ” I wish the one wearing orange will die!” As it happened, I was the only one wearing orange nearby, so to her surprise, ” I will be thankful if I will die ahead of you!”, I blurted out to the bulging of her eyes!

Like Boaz, my sense of hearing is magnified that loud sounds like a singer’s high-pitched voice can almost break my eardrums! I may not be able to identify footsteps at times, nevertheless, I can hear them loud and clear!

The next time when we cross paths with a physically challenged homo sapien, we should think twice before an unkind word escapes our mouths!*