Cureless

To the brother I’ve grown to hate, love and ignore… well, ignore for most part, congratulations for reaping the fruits of your four years of hardwork. Thank you for keeping us all in the family sane for not worrying about too much about you. In other words, you never gave the family a serious headache, save for a few times when you spent some nights at an Internet cafe in our village playing Ragnarok Online and a few mornings at some discreet gaming cafe in Sampaloc after polishing your strategies in DoTA.

I’d also like to thank you for not entirely living up to your nefarious reputation. In as much as I knew how much you hated Mekon (our mutt), you didn’t subject the rest of the animal kingdom to the same misery the poor dog has undergone. You treated your experimental rats and rabbits well. I doubt though, that injecting them with various chemicals gave you so much delight more than tossing them up, blowing their guts with your gun, and seeing their gore falling from the air did. (Kidding, you don’t have a gun, do you?) Hey, you were just being a good student. But I really disliked your friend (or was it you?) who abandoned the poor rabbit inside a rat-sized cage in the apartment.

Bok, thank you for being the total opposite of being a spendtrift. I knew our parents should have told you this but I’m saying it in behalf of them. You never asked for anything other than your tuition and school fees and allowance. Even though your vice, err, regular gaming hobby must have eaten a big portion of your daily allowance, you still managed to save that 15,000 pesos Mom got from your closet (which she borrowed later). You never asked for a new computer when the old one got totally exhausted from adopting to your configuration settings. Instead, you were satisfied with our aunt’s old laptop. I’m sorry if I wasn’t able to turn it into a gaming computer. You could have saved more if you had just stayed home to play DoTA with your friends. Moreover, you never mooched from our parents for the next-gen gaming console even when your PlayStation turned 60 years old and eventually went 6 feet underground. You were so kind to let go of your console gaming stardom and think about the welfare and future of our family instead.

I’m also sorry if our parents gave you everything but a material gift for your graduation. That’s your fault for not being too vocal. Well, Mommy thinks you would be happy with all our relatives and her friends celebrating your graduation so she bought lechon and enslaved our aunts, uncles and grannies to prepare a feast for you. Well, I hope you were happy with their “gift” for you because I’m not. I feel that Mom didn’t prepare this for you in the first place. She’s the one who wants to gather people around her, and not you. I just wish she had just asked you for a gift rather than spending for a bunch of relatives who has nothing to do with our family.

But, but, but… The fact that you turned some song into a poem using the Magic Sing karaoke, you must have had a good time. But be aware that our pesky relatives will allow you to sing no more after that since there wouldn’t be another celebration in your name.