Middle

The electrical system in my house is acting up again, and it’s bothersome. I’m not able to smoothly surf the Internet, watch my high definition television, and run the central air conditioning without a little bit of interruption every hour. Amazing how bothersome is a relative term.

Until the age of eight, I lived in the Philippines. In 1973, we were considered middle class but sometimes were called rich by our neighbors. My father was an engineer and my mother was a teacher. Even though the family car had a hole in the floor, we had the only car on our block, so we were considered rich. We had the only air conditioner on our block, a small window unit that could cool a 15 x 15 foot room that helped with my asthma. Again, rich.

There was martial law, and curfews at 10pm, followed by city-wide brownouts or blackouts which would last sometimes the whole night. We kept candles ready. I don’t remember us having flashlights.

Food was cooked using propane stoves, and everything else was manual. We had a refrigerator but I don’t remember using it, or getting ice from the freezer, if it had one. The only time I ate ice cream was when the ice cream vendor rode his bicycle down our street.

Our toilet did not have a seat, so you had to squat instead of sitting down. There was no toilet paper so you had to use a large cup of water, similar to a 7-11 Big Gulp, and your other hand to wipe. The bathroom was a concrete room with a hole in the floor for the drain. We took baths by filling a pail with water, dipping a Big Gulp-sized cup in the pail, and pouring the water over our heads. There was no shower stall, or bathtub. The only fixture was a single room temperature water spigot. If you wanted hot water, you had to go to the kitchen and boil a pot of water, bring it to the bathroom and mix the hot water with the tap water. There was a bar of soap, toothbrushes, and Colgate toothpaste on the top of the sink. The sink was also made of poured concrete. We didn’t know what dental floss was until we came to America.

We were rich, so I usually got one nice toy from my parents for my birthday. If I got more than one toy, I had to share with the other kids in our apartment building, even though I didn’t want to, because I am an only child.

We had a black and white TV. When my parents bought me a piano, the whole block came over to see it because most had never seen a piano inside a house before. I went to a private school.

During food shortages, rice was distributed to each household from large trucks. We were taught to finish our plates. We drank tap water with our meals. If times were good, we could drink Coca Cola. Steak was too expensive even for middle class people like us. I grew up drinking powdered milk and didn’t know what cow’s milk tasted like until we came to America.

When it rained, it flooded the driveway of our apartment complex up to our ankles. We folded newspaper and made boats that floated down to the street.

I don’t remember commercials on TV. I don’t remember asking for a toy that I saw on TV. I don’t remember window shopping. I don’t remember wanting more than one thing at a time.