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Voices of the Martial Law Babies

I was in my fav ramen house eating what else?, all tables were taken, when two men in their early 50s asked if the can share the table with me. I said yes. I learned that they came from a meeting of their high school alumni Christmas reunion committee and were waiting for their wives to finish shopping. They were high school buddies.
The men graduated from a well known Manila public high with a good CAT unit. Since Trililing was the staple of the evening news on the LED HD TV, talk of course was on the events of the last few days. The men were trying to recall how it was to grow up during the Martial Law years. One thing defined our years; Marcos taking off Voltes V from the air and replacing it with ugghhh "Candy Candy" and "Paul in Fantasyland"! It appeared that from our child's eye, this was a great folly of dictatorship. And we learned as we became young men, follies are what makes dictatorships fall.
All three of us were at EDSA 1986, the two men on the barricades and me inside Crame. CAT was a defining time in their teen years. One of the men said it built character. But what they remember growing up in lower middle class Manila is that they had to be home before 7 since Marcos Metrocom can arrest you. The word "dampot" is not alien to the three of us. The three of us agreed that the Marcos years were horrible and everything has to be done to prevent this from returning. But EDSA 1986 allowed it to return.
Our political opinions diverged with talk of the Ramos presidency, with one of them saying Ramos was the best president. The other was more sanguine, that despite Ramos solving the Cory "Dark Ages", it made electricity rates expensive and the legacy continues today. My opinion of Tabako is mixed. The 1987 Constitution doomed him from being an effective president.
We could have gone to the mall's upstairs pub to share more stories if the wifey didn't ring one of the men up saying she was done with the groceries. So it was time to bid farewell. But one of the old high school buddies said
"Mabuti ngayon, hindi madaling ma-goyo ang kabataan. Pero kailangan lang nila ng mas malakas na paninindigan at tapang" "Tayo natatakot pa noon dahil mahirap hanapin ang totoo!"

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