To my glee I discovered that I only have one patient in the clinic this morning, so I asked my secretary to check if David, the ophthalmologist in the clinic across ours, was available. My eyes have slowly been getting blurrier and blurrier since 2019, and I have sufficiently diagnosed myself as having presbyopia, the blurring of vision that comes with aging. Still, I have been in denial ever since, and resisted having my eyes checked. The past few months I found myself misreading stuff, and I don’t want to wait until I misread a laboratory exam or something as important before I drag myself to the doctor. David diagnosed me as having, indeed, presbyopia, and advised reading glasses.

Other than presbyopia, my friends I have discovered that that we are now being afflicted by varying degrees of dementia. It now takes us a longer time to recall something, and we sometimes find that we re-tell stories we’ve just told a few minutes ago, aka, “umikot na ang plaka”–a statement which carbon dates us more.

The earliest signs of dementia happened as early as 2012, when we were having a few drinks in Oar House, our favorite bar back in hellowship. With me were Frichmond, Smoketh, Jao, Helliza, and HTGOF. I told everyone that that morning I saw a huge crowd just outside St. Paul’s College dancing to the tune of Party Rock Anthem by LMFAO.

“It caused a bit of traffic!” Smoketh said.

“It’s called a flashmob!” Frichmond said.

We then proceeded to eat Oar House’s classic breakfast pizza and eggplant parmigiana. Frichmond excused herself to go to the restroom.

When Frichmond returned she looked excited and had a big smile on her face. While in the restroom she remembered a story that she wanted to tell us.

“Guys may kwento ako!” she started. “Alam nyo ba kaninang umaga… may flashmob sa labas ng St. Paul!”

We looked at each other, puzzled and amused.

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