Botany

Remember passing notes in class...

Come on, everyone's done it.

Remember the feeling that the teacher might catch you passing one and yell at you or make you read it out loud?

I've passed a lot of notes in my time, you know the ones, " I'm bored." " I'm sleepy na." " So...did he call you last night?" " The teachers slip is showing" " Meet you at lunch" " Did you do the homework...pakopya ha!"

Of course there were the more substantial ones...the sketches that one would make and pass to you for your visual pressure, the hangman and tic-tac-toe ones, a few poems and such things.

I've kept the more interesting notes from the years past and I think I'll share the most interesting one of them today.

When I was first year in Ateneo, I had been assigned a class in Botany. Just like Cristian who is now in his first year at UST. His recent comments on his botany difficulties reminded me of this thing I've been stashing in my "baul" for roughly fifteen years now.

I got it from one of my best friends Meng, who I met during our required Orsem 1989. She was late, we were already on our break, she sat next to me and I offered her a sip of my Royal true orange and basically, that is how we met.

Seeing that our class was blocked for our first years of college, we attended the same classes almost all of the time.

She gave me this at the end of our final lab class in Botany...right before finals and semester break.

Dear Leslie,
Howdy! How's life, pal?
Are you done with your exercises?
Can you believe it? This is the last normal lab day
already! I'm sure we're gonna miss it. Let's remember
this as the last activity we did in lab, rather the last kalokohan!
Were done!
Meng

I kept this for so long so I remember the day she handed it to me exactly. It was sunny, we were all chattering because the teacher had given up and just sat in his chair reading. For some reason, I remember one of my classmates cooing at this feathery troll ballpen topper thing she kept with her all the time. I forget her name now.

Meng snuck over to me from her table and handed the leaf to me. I think she was done examining it under the microscope.

Notice she says she gave it to me so I would remember our last lab day.

The thing is, I do...kind of.... but ironically, she doesn't.

I had to send her a picture as proof a couple of years ago.

I'm actually surprised the writing is still on , or for that matter, that the leaf is still intact. Must have been one of those that we put chemicals on.

Oh oh...

I wonder if it's radioactive.