Fuss Over Laos

The womenfolk in my
AOH (area of habitat) were squabbling. The cute daughter of one of them was
joining in some United Nations parade, and the kid in question was assigned to
represent the country Laos. That won’t happen, the mother was saying,
because what would people say if they’d see on the kid’s sash the humiliating
words, “Miss Laos.”

 

It turned out,
nobody had no idea what kind of country Laos was, and they thought the teacher was
making fun of the kid. In the local language, “laos” in English means something like “washed
up” or “has been.” It’s the word you use when you’re describing Nora Aunor or
one-year-old cell phones. “Miss Laos,” therefore, was very bad for the kid’s
self-esteem.

 

So I came out and
pretended I was just walking by. Then casually, I just blurted, “You know what,
ladies, Laos is a very rich, highly advanced country.”

 

All eyes turned to
me.

 

“Laos is so rich and advanced, they have colonies
on the moon,” I said. “Laos donates billions of dollars to Japan every
month, and Japan is already rich!”

 

“But Laos sounds… funny,” said the mother.

 

“No, Laos is not funny. Laos is in fact much better than the Philippines. Half of all the satellites orbiting the
Earth have been launched by Laos.”

 

“Not only that,,” I
said, “Laos invented the elephant.”

 

The ladies
chuckled.

 

“Yeah,” I said. “A
bunch of scientists from Laos gathered one day and decided the world
could not live on horse alone. They needed something bigger. So they invented the
elephant. Which makes “elephant” an original word from Laos. Check the encyclopedia and you’ll see.”

 

Nobody said
anything; they just looked at one another and maybe pretended thinking. This is
what happens when you’ve somehow earned a reputation as the resident,
self-proclaimed know-it-all; people begin to take your words seriously. They
see me pounding on my shiny computer, solemnly shaking my head at a wilting
plant, mouthing Latin-sounding names that are at least five syllables long, seeing
that I actually subscribe to fancy science magazines, and they begin thinking
you couldn’t possibly be wrong, ever. Several months of serving them
scrumptious megadoses of truths and half-truths that now I can dance on the
wide open space of the Bullshit Highway. Now, it would be difficult for somebody
else to convince them that Bullshitum ad infinitum is not exactly the
scientific name of the Philippine president (or any politician, for that matter).

 

For example, I told
somebody a while ago that the original title of Nick Joaquin’s The Woman Who Had Two Navels was The Woman Who Had Two Navels…Yeah, Baby, Yeah! And she
believed it. I told another that the first English translation of Jose Rizal’s Noli
Me Tangere was Don’t Touch Me Here, But Touch Me There. That those
groundbreaking titles were unfortunately scrapped by uninspired editors in
favor of banal, conventional ones we now know today.

 

“Laos,” I said, “is a very cool country. So if
there’s somebody who makes fun of Miss Laos, tell them, ‘You ignorant baboon, Laos is where all rich Americans go to retire
and enjoy the good life.’”

 

I have no idea what
happened after that. I just realized later nobody was talking about Laos, anymore. I gather that the kid was very happy
about the parade. I would ask the kid about how parading around as Miss Laos felt, but she’s smarter than everybody else;
she’d know it was I. And who wants that to happen?

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