ide note: I got this one for Christmas back in 2002 from a girl friend, too. I actually found it very funny... Imagine this - boxer shorts, and a huge, scandalously screaming "BIG DOGS" written on the elastic waist band... First time I wore it to sleep, I was pleasantly shocked to see Scooby Doo "glowing" on my boxers after I turned the lights off! It instantly became my favorite nocturnal attire. Haha!). I'd be walking barefoot all over the house (and sometimes even out in the yard), or spending the whole day with my "out-of-bed" hair and unshaved mug. I call it my Sunday-morning-mode, except that it didn't have to be a Sunday for me to switch to that mode. I think it's an off-shoot of my college days when it was okay to show up in class in a tank top/sando, bermuda/"puruntong" shorts and moccasins/slippers. The mantra then was "it's what's inside our heads that counts, not what we wear", Although I never did wear a sando in UP (some of my bolder classmates did), I wasn't very picky with my school outfit. I mean, I would simply pull out whatever's on top of my pile of clothes in my closet. It didn't help that I'm partially color blind (Listen people, if it looks blue, I don't care whatever shade it's in, IT IS BLUE! So don't talk to me about baby, sky, navy, teal, aquamarine, turquoise. They all look blue to me!). There were a lot of fashion "lows" for me back in college. But I believe the lowest I've gone would have been going to a late afternoon class right after our PE (Philippine games... I still remember it - we played Dr. Kwek-kwek? whatever, and my face was miserably caught right under the sweat-soaked pits of my guy friend/classmate, and the moronic "it" took forever to untangle us while I slowly suffocated in the stench of human apocrine secretions. Maybe that's where I got my asthma?!). Some time during our PE session, my "puruntong" shorts ripped right at the crotch, creating a six-inch view into my "crown jewels". Of course, Murphy's Law had its way, and I didn't bring extra pants, only a fresh shirt. So as I stood there in a vacant lab in my jockeys, furiously stapling (as in, with STAPLE WIRES!) the hole shut while my best friend stood guard near the door, in case someone barged in, I promised myself I'd be a reformed dude and be a "smarter" dresser if I got out of that predicament with my pants on, pun intended. Of course, a week after that, I was my usual sloppy-dresser self. Old habits die hard. A pair of jeans would last me a full academic year. The older and dirtier, the better!In the past few years, though, I've grown more "adult" with my choices of attire. It was basically out of necessity. I mean, which patient would want himself to be examined by someone in shirt and jeans? We were actually "selling" ourselves to patients. How we look is all part of the "medical" package. It took a lot of time before I got used to wearing chinos and polo shirts, and I have my kuya to thank for that. He's the super gwapo, the fashion "guru", the style expert. He would tell me which colors matched, and which clothes could be worn to a Bjork concert. And somewhere along the way, his tastes rubbed off on me. There goes one point for the "nurture" theory. But on my off-hospital days, it's back to jeans and shirts for me. So, dad, if you're reading this (although I'm pretty sure you're not!), lemme just say that the holes and patches on my jeans and the stains on my shirt don't mean I need the help of the Salvation Army or Caritas. And you don't have to ask me why I can't afford to buy new clothes. But thanks for the extra cash you slipped in my pocket before. Hmmmm... that gives me an idea... Haha!
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