Good thing there was nothing tangible available to her to prove that point on one hand and embarrass me on the other. However, when my nieces Aidagere, Bea, Pau-pau and nephew Jepoy all grow up to be in their 20s someday, I will have tons of moving and noisy stuff to make their faces all scarlet like Christmas ribbons.
Last week was the culmination of the summer workshop classes they had been attending in one of the best new schools in the city. Aidagere was enrolled in a science discovery class whereas Bea took up a module on reading. Pau and Jepoy, who are of the same age, were in a kindergarten class which had them singing in Chinese.
Pau-pau and Jepoy took the stage in the culminating activity of the workshop held in the activity center of perhaps our biggest mall here. Pau-pau and Jepoy were singing with their own respective classmates and as early as three weeks before the program, the two of them would regale us with one Chinese song after another, singing as loud as their vocal chords would permit.
Pau-pau took the stage first with her classmates. She wore gloves and a paper crown over her head. The minute the music began she began to sing as loud as she could but as the song went on, her mouth began to move less and she began to find the stage floor more interesting than the faces of the people in the audience. A little while later, she just stopped singing all together. All of us simultaneously started cheering her on by mouthing "Pau" and "sing" in all sorts of combinations and expressions but she continued to fixate her eyes on the floor. Uh-oh. My niece just had her first dose of stage fright.
Jepoy's class took centerstage after Pau-pau had walked off the stage. Jepoy was one of the smallest boys in the group so he stood on the rightmost end. He was the first to enter and immediately stuck his tongue out at all of us. He sure is one brave boy...well, either he's very brave or simply "walang hiya (roughly translated to gutsy)." They went on to sing two nursery rhymes and one Chinese song and he jumped around and wiggled his little hips like a pro! He was just the cutest four-year old boy on that stage. And he did all this with a fever raging about him!
I got both of their antics on video so when Jepoy becomes a big boy and Pau-pau a big girl someday, I'll sure do a good demo for them to jolt their memory cells a bit and say "You know when you were four years old, you used to sing just like this..." I mean, that's what it's all about anyway: revenge.
Okay, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
(L-R) Aimee, Jepoy, me, Aidagere, my sister, Bea. Pau-pau was off playing with a classmate.
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