SUCKING UP

I have smooched up a few already. I don't mean boyfriends, I mean friends of five or more years and perhaps a few elders I have looked up to in years. Sharing such intimate gestures with these people mean much to me. I don't really do that much in public. I am not that demonstrative to people. People in proximity know when I get cheesy to them only in my writings and notes to them. Unlike my husband, I am not that much of a tactile person. While he reaches out to me, holds my hands in jeepneys, pinches my arm, even kisses me in public, I usually cringe at such open expression of emotion to other people. Through the years though, my husband and some of my caring friends have shown me it is alright. At times, I have to lie to myself, forcing my psyche to sink in with the idea that it's all right to get into the mush in the open.

I can take that form of lies but one thing, sucking up. It gives me worse than goosebumpbs seeing people licking superiors' boots to keep up with the tide. For some people, it comes as though it is nature's way of getting out of a mire alive. I think they have missed the value of integrity, of getting there at your OWN expense.

In a different working world I am in where I thought brilliant young minds infest, I see some classic forms of sucking up. I see students fall into that crap to get by or buy grades. I was caught flabbergasted. But I can understand why students do that to teachers. It's survival tactic all right. But what is sickening, although not new to me, is when teachers do that to students for some merit, material or not, like approval, sympathy, and more indescribable favors.

I can say that in such statuses that students in this international school has, it is quite tempting to plunge into this means of staying above water. It is indeed lonely to be honest in a miry fix. Sometimes, temptations like this is hard to resist especially when students tail you around like crazy rhinoceros trying to do some surviving on their own as well.

In moments like this, I just snap my eyes and ears shot when money becomes the bait. I can't stay awake on extended nights and carry the guilt. I want to walk light during my waking moments and be proud I stood strong and well.