The Bum

May 4, 2007

Yep, I’m a bum. I am jobless [1], couch potato [2], shit [3] and many more [4].

But what the heck. For all I care, I am a UP bum.

Nothing is more flattering than being a UP bum. For once, you (still) belong to the best bums in the country. You are a bum not because you are less capable. You are a bum not because no company likes to hire you. You bum because it can be a choice.

For me, being a UP bum is an obligation. For five years, the Filipino people toiled hard to pay my professors to torture me relentlessly. The tax payers never failed to disburse a part of their hard-earned salary to keep me awake at night with my boring books and on day time, letting me experience the cruelty of some of the hardest exams in the country.

Now that I’m done with all of those, it is best to be a bum. It is my obligation to myself. Enough of the trouble for tax payers on looking for ways to pay for my distress. Enough of my exorbitant torture. Enough of the torture! Now is the time to talk about self-preservation, selfhood and yes, the art of bumming.

The art of bumming has a rich history. In my case, it started after my last exam in college. To date, it has been one month and a week. And it seems that the history has a long way to go.

I think nobody can ever master the art of bumming. In case you don’t know, or haven’t tried, it is a rather very complicated process.

It starts shortly before lunch. Usually, a hard bang on the door and a screaming mother commences it. But on my case, it is typically a light tap from my nephew who would ask me some weird questions then beam his toothless gum. On some rare cases, a phone patch from my mother hundred miles away, and yes, she is screaming.

Lunch is served. Bums eat heavy lunches, probably because it is their first meal of the day, or maybe their last until midnight. What follows next is the most difficult phase: thinking of ways on how to do nothing until the next cycle of sleep. In other words, thinking of ways how to waste the waking hours.

For the past days, I have been considering painting as the most creative bumming experience. Any bum would want to be creative, wouldn’t they? I have planned of going to the art store numerous times and buy those pastels and water colors and paint brushes. The last canvass I painted was from ten years ago. I think it is time to attack art once again.

But for the hell of me, or for the hell (of the) weather, I can hardly tie my shoes and go out of the house. So I’m stuck with reading books instead, and describing mathematics to my nephews who are as stubborn as the white cat that crunches my cigarette butts at home.

But take note I’m reading not because some tax payer coerces me to read. I read because I have lagged behind in literature, thanks to thick, moronic engineering books which were bullies for the past years. At last, I could read silly novels without the threat of zit breakout, or without the fear of not finishing any of them. Nobody would quiz me on Tuesdays with Morrie, or Sunset Romance (English version of those cheap Tagalog paperback novels for rent at Philcoa), right?

I enjoy being a bum. My nephews also do because they have ample supply of junk foods during primetime. Maybe my cousins also do because if I get bored and hungry, I experiment at the kitchen with good results most of the time. Although my mother screams at the other end of the line every other day, I have her blessings for my bumming experience. As a matter of fact, she supports it but only for a month. She thinks I have done a great deal at college that I should be easy on myself for once, but I think that’s funny.

For the meantime, let me bum. Let me fry the couch potatoes.

[1] Not that I won’t have one or want one, but c’mon, give me a break. Besides, I wouldn’t want to hate my first job for the rest of my life just because I couldn’t wait to have it.

[2] If it persists, by next week, I could finally figure out that my alarm clock was invented to alarm me that my life is getting crappier by the minute I stay in bed. Oh wait, did I say I have an alarm clock?

[3] My little nephew thinks it’s cool to stink. We can go on days without bath but still both look cute. Believe me, it’s genes, man.

[4] Now, it’s worst. I find channel 50+ more interesting than anything on cable. Though sometimes these Chinese channels couldn’t make me understand a thing for two hours, I still find them entertaining, especially when the television is on mute.