| LIGAW TINGIN |
These cyber days, romance has gone digital. Facebook has
taken over face-to-face courtship. Today’s young lass is wooed and won via the
internet. My kasambahay’s young daughter spends her days glued to her tablet in
promiscuous virtual relationships with numerous young men, to the distress of her
mother, who despairs of imposing discipline on the 14-year-old!
No young person today, it seems, is able to survive without
this gadget, no matter how humble the parental circumstance may be. In a way,
it reminds me of the “phone pal” days of my youth when telephones were still a
rarity and one frequently had to importune a neighbor to make a phone call,
and/or verbally tussle with a party line over its use.
I remember a time when elopements were the “thing.” Many of
my cousins, facing parental objection/s to the object of their affection, ended
up eloping—then married in haste, upon their repentant return to the parental
home, usually with baby in tow to soften recalcitrant parental hearts.
I haven’t heard of anyone eloping these days.
Today’s young lovers have it much easier. Many simply pack
their bags and move in together, parental objections having become redundant in
our more permissive society. I think—pious constraints notwithstanding—that the
arrangement is pragmatic.
Why take on the “till death do us part” commitment unless
you have given it some very serious thought, tried it on for size, so to speak,
and are relatively sure the union will last beyond the throes of passion and
the rigors of day-to-day reality? One doesn’t even buy a pair of shoes without
fitting them! Marriage, surely, deserves far more serious consideration!
But there was romance and adventure in the repressive “good
old days.” Doubtless the sense of anticipation, delayed gratification, and/or
the attraction of the forbidden fruit have much to do with it.
‘Visiting’ - It would all start with ligaw tingin.
My generation, which came of age in the ’50s, literally
lived the age of innocence. Sex education was unheard of, and a taboo subject
at home where the truth about the birds and the bees was never discussed.
I think I was in second-year high school when no less that
our Dean, Fr. John P. Delaney, S.J. taught our class that one didn’t catch
babies from holding hands! He took the trouble of inviting female students from
UP to enliven our hitherto dull all-male class parties. Of course, slow drag
was discouraged; a Jesuit would hold a ruler threatening to measure the
distance between dancing couples. Instead, the high-flying coeds wrestled with us
clumsy males as they taught us how to dance the boogie and the square dance.
The usual courtship ritual was for the boy to pay court to a
girl by formally calling on her at home (euphemistically called “visiting”). If
the girl is pretty and popular, or if there were more than one girl of about
the same age in the house, you could have several young swains “visiting” at
the same time. Then, the situation could get somewhat muddled.
A familiar experience was that of a classmate who had three very
pretty younger sisters, and it was not unusual for us to have a posse of boys
calling on them simultaneously, it was difficult to tell which one of us a
particular boy, or group of boys, had come to visit. We labelled the unexpected
visitor “submarino” for obvious reasons. In the normal course of events, the
object of the boy/boys’ attention became clear and eventually, the girl
likewise would make her choice known by agreeing to “go steady” with a
particular suitor, automatically eliminating the others.
The standard practice was for courting couples to sit facing
each other across a table, or side by side on adjoining chairs, with or without
the watchful eyes of a chaperone hovering nearby. Absolutely no touching, and
no holding hands! Dating was not encouraged, and if allowed, required a
chaperone, usually a trusted older person.
Even going out to parties with girlfriends was strictly
restricted, and required a midnight curfew. A particularly romantic tradition
of that era, which has regrettably disappeared over the years, is the harana in
which a suitor “serenades” his ladylove with a guitar and a song.
Perhaps it is just as well that this romantic practice has
disappeared. How indeed, do you serenade today’s ladylove, living 10, or 29
floors above, in a multistory condominium on a street clogged with traffic? Can
the plaintive chords of your guitar and timbre of your singing voice, no matter
how sweet or persuasive, overcome the resounding cacophony of the incessant
traffic noise across the street?
And one may well wonder if digital courtship and dating are
as romantic as in the days of the harana when we managed and pressed our suit
by visiting our ladylove at home and stealing a kiss or two!
As the song goes,
“Those were the days my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd sing the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way . . .”
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd sing the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way . . .”
But end, they did.
