Quality time in a playful mood
Humming in my UNIVERSE By Jim Paredes
The Philippine STAR 01/14/2007

I love the time I spend with my family, especially when everyone is in a playful mood. On a recent leisurely two-hour drive to Terrigal, a scenic destination north of Sydney, we started asking each other hypothetical questions to while away the time. Some examples:

1. Which five historical figures, dead or alive, would you would like to have dinner with?

2. What would you rather experience: two hours onboard a real alien ship or an equal amount of time with real live dinosaurs?

3. Who would you rather meet? Jose Rizal or all four of the Beatles?

4. Name five vampy, sexy personalities you would like to have dinner with.

5. Name off-beat, flamboyant characters, dead or alive, you would like to meet.

6. If you could choose any job in the world, what would it be?

The questions were exciting enough, but the answers were even more intriguing. Among the historical figures we wanted to have dinner with, Jesus, Buddha, Einstein, Hitler, Leonardo Da Vinci, Rizal, Salvador Dali, Judas, Mao Tse Tung and Rasputin topped the list. But as soon as we came up with our guest list for dinner, more practical and some funny considerations popped up. For example, could Hitler, an anti-Semite, and Einstein, a Jew, be seated together or even be in the same room? Would Einstein insist on kosher food? What if Rizal wanted adobo? And would the Buddha even eat at all? What if Jesus insisted on washing everyone’s feet all of a sudden? And why have Mao there? Isn’t one dictator more than enough? And didn’t Mao, according to the account of his American doctor, enjoy the habit of “breaking wind” after a meal? Wouldn’t that upset everyone?

Leonardo would probably be inspired to paint a new “Last Supper” with this motley crew as his models. And what would the eccentric egomaniacal Dali do? Wasn’t he known to carry a big bell that he would ring if no one was paying attention to him? And wouldn’t Rasputin make everyone uncomfortable with his evil killer stare? Would he be paranoid and suspect that the meal was poisoned? What a bizarre tableau the dinner table would make.

On question No. 2, which involved the choice between an alien experience with the possibility of being abducted and all of our orifices probed (but perhaps we could be benignly treated, as E.T. did his earthling friends), or the prospect of witnessing real live dinosaurs à la Jurassic Park, we were evenly split. Admittedly, both prospects are quite spectacular. Imagine actually dialoguing with creatures from another galaxy. Would they be like us in any way? Would they be superior? Our assumption was yes, because their being on earth would mean they had the technology to travel to this neck of the universe. But what would it really be like, seeing with one’s own eyes mammoth prehistoric creatures like the T-Rex, the velociraptor or the stegosaurus, which no man has ever laid eyes on? Would they look anything close to the artists’ sketches we have based on scientific speculations?

Between hanging out with Jose Rizal or the Beatles, I am sorry to say but our national hero had to take a back seat to the Fab Four. We are all musically inclined in the family, after all, and even just the hypothetical prospect of meeting the greatest band in history tops anything else. My son Mio loves to hear me tell over and over again my experience of watching the Beatles when they came here in the late ’60s. It is such a wonderful bonding experience to relish music and discuss musicians we both like.

On question No. 4 regarding the vampy, sexy company we would enjoy having, I named Marilyn Monroe, among others. My daughter Ala rattled of some Latino-sounding male names. She also said she was intrigued by Cleopatra – she with her extravagant milk baths who seduced powerful men, and who killed herself with an asp. My son mentioned Paris Hilton, which I readily seconded. We both laughed at how attracted we were to her white trash-slut image and how unabashedly we were admitting it.

The offbeat or flamboyant characters we tripped on were Johnny Depp (my daughter Ala’s choice) and Sasha Baron Cohen, a.k.a. Borat, who we unanimously agreed on. Also mentioned were Salvador Dali, Freddie Mercury and Marie Antoinette. Oh, what fun company they would all be.

On the last question about the ideal occupation, Mio said it would be cool to be a spy à la 007 – with all the gadgets – or an assassin. In the creativity classes I offer, this fantasy seems to appear quite often. I wonder why? But nothing beats the occupation I read somewhere, of being the “official devirginizer,” which is assigned to the shaman of some tribe in the South Pacific. While we found the job description hilarious, my children had serious doubts as to how much “fun” that would be if it became an obligation and duty to administer to everyone. And you can’t delegate the job to anyone. Hey, it’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it.

Such silly moments when everyone is just hanging loose and being playful make for priceless quality time. Often, when we try to imagine ourselves as old and alone, we imagine that our best memories would be the serious conversations and the monumental and dramatic quotable quotes and great truths that we learned from our loved ones. While such moments would undoubtedly qualify as great memories, I would also include in the list the times when we were all just being and doing it with unconditional fun and unguarded humor.

One of my fondest memories of my grandfather is a story he told, obviously a fib, about someone he knew who wore his suspenders so tight that his feet could not touch the ground. And he made this ridiculous claim that the only ticklish spot in his body was his thumb. I remember his impish smile as he insisted on the veracity of his claims against our loud, incredulous objections. Those silly moments with him say so much about his creativity, his humor, and his capacity to enjoy light moments with his loved ones.

I imagine that even Jesus and Buddha had such moments, though unrecorded, when they laughed out loud at jokes, or saw the humor that God likes to leave in little corners in the universe and that spring at us from time to time. If you don’t believe God plays cosmic jokes, look at a platypus!

Great men must have a great capacity for laughter. G.K. Chesterton put it so well when he said, “Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.”
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Visit: http://jimparedes.com. Write to jim_paredes@yahoo.com.