Grade Four challenged me in ways I never saw coming, not just in the classroom, but in the slow, quiet shaping of who I was becoming. As lessons grew harder, I fought to keep pace. But somewhere along the way, I stumbled onto something more valuable than any grade: the ability to genuinely admire classmates whose talents outshone mine. Their intelligence, their creativity, their confidence, their kindness, these taught me things no textbook ever could.
At home, I measured myself quietly against my older siblings, chasing a bar I wasn't sure I'd ever reach. But at school, I found something just as powerful: real friendships, careless adventures, teachers who inspired without even trying, and countless small moments that felt like nothing at the time, moments I now hold onto as some of my most treasured memories.
Looking back, I understand now that Grade Four was never really about grades or exam scores. It was the year I learned humility. The year I learned to celebrate other people's gifts instead of measuring myself against them. It taught me that real growth doesn't come from report cards, it comes from the people you meet, the moments you share, and even the disappointments that quietly, patiently, shape you into someone new.
To learn more about my Grade Four journey, read the full story below.
Others Stood Out More
By Grade Four, the easy rhythm of the lower grades was gone. No more one teacher to have one steady voice all day. Now we shifted from subject to subject, teacher to teacher, Mathematics, English, Science, Social Studies, all of it, one teacher for each subject. And to my young mind, school suddenly felt serious in a way it never had before.
Being placed in Section Two meant something to me, too. A year earlier, I'd been in Section Four. Climbing two levels felt like a quiet victory, and I carried it like a badge I'd earned. So I worked harder, determined to prove I belonged there.
But it didn't take long to realize. some of my classmates were simply operating on another level entirely. One of them was a boy named Reynold Chiquote, or something close to that, long years have blurred the edges of my memory. He sat near me, and it was obvious almost immediately: he was sharper. He grasped new lessons instantly, answered before the rest of us had even caught up, always a step ahead.
One afternoon, I was called to the blackboard to list and explain the animal classifications, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, and the rest. It was the professor's teaching style: after covering a topic, he'd call someone up to the board, cold, to see how much had actually stuck. I stood there, chalk in hand, reaching back for what he'd just taught us.
At first, it came easily. Answer after answer, smooth and sure.
Then, on the last one, my mind simply emptied. Nothing.
From his seat, Reynold whispered the answer.
I hesitated.
I'd always taken quiet pride in working things out myself, even as a boy, there was something deeply satisfying about not needing anyone's help. And for a moment, standing there in the silence, that pride and that panic pulled at me in two different directions.
But pride doesn't always survive the moment. Sometimes it has to bend. I took the answer. It's better than standing frozen while the whole class watched and waited.
But even Reynold wasn't the sharpest mind in that room. That title belonged to a girl named Jocelyn Ababon, from Kinasang-an, Pardo. I visited her home once, a small wooden hut, poor even by the standards of my childhood. It was the kind of stark detail that stays with you: a reminder that some families carried burdens heavier than mine ever were.
But none of that ever interfered her performance at school. She was brilliant, quietly, effortlessly brilliant. Whatever her circumstances were, they never once dimmed her intellectual ability.
When the school year ended, I assumed I'd see her again in Grade Five, Section One, where I'd been promoted. She wasn't there. I never found out why. Maybe her family moved. Maybe she transferred schools. I've always hoped it was something that simple. Even now, all these years later, I still think of her sometimes.
Some children carry extraordinary gifts long before the world ever notices. I've always hoped, wherever her path led, that life gave Jocelyn the chance her talent deserved.
The Season of Giving
More than anything else, that school year was brightened by one thing: the coming of Christmas.
We were told to bring a parol or lantern, to decorate our classroom. I made mine by hand, carved thin slats from a strip of bamboo, bent them into a star, and wrapped the frame in colorful Japanese paper. It wasn't fancy, but I made sure it was even, steady, right. In my hands, it felt like something brilliant. Something worth hanging where everyone could see.
Then there were the days our teacher had us copy Christmas songs from the blackboard into our music notebooks and sing them together. Something shifted in the room on those days, the air felt lighter, like even the most bored kid in class couldn't help but catch the excitement.
The one that stuck with me most that year was "Give Love on Christmas Day" by Michael Jackson. It was everywhere, on the radio, in the hallways, in the voices of kids from other classrooms I'd never even spoken to. To this day, it's still my favorite Christmas song. For a few weeks, singing it in that classroom felt like standing in the happiest place on earth.
Here's the song:
We learned others too, "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," "Mama Cita," "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", and they didn't stay in the classroom. They followed me home, humming under my breath the whole walk back, refusing to let go.
On weekends, I'd sing them while doing small chores around the house. One morning, half-lost in my own world, I sang "Give Love on Christmas Day" with more feeling than I meant to show. I forgot my mother was even nearby.
I froze the second I heard her voice: "Louder, I want to hear more."
I never sang for her again after that. Not on purpose. I just couldn't find the courage.
At home, though, there was one evening I'll never forget.
I invited my childhood friend and neighbor, Ayen, to go caroling around the neighborhood. We both jumped at the idea, and honestly, why wouldn't we, coins, treats, little prizes, all in exchange for a few songs. I wasn't shy at all. I sang my heart out and so was my friend.
Not until we got stuck in one house for what felt like forever, especially this one lady who kept asking me in particular, again and again, to sing just one more song.
Eventually, we ran out of songs entirely. We'd sung everything we knew. So we just started over, singing the same ones again, and somehow no one seemed to mind.
The hardest part came late that night, close to 10 p.m. By then, our parents were probably out looking for us, wondering where on earth we'd disappeared to. But the last household we visited kept giving anything, on top of the coins, there were also school supplies, notebooks, pencils, even candies and chocolates, whatever they had on hand.
It was late. It was probably reckless, looking back. But it was fun, the kind of fun only childhood knows how to give you.
But nothing that year was as anticipated as the Christmas party in school and at its heart, the exchange gift.
My sister and I went to the market together to pick mine out. I found a small figurine, delicate, almost elegant, the kind of thing I'd never owned but had always quietly wanted. I wrapped it carefully and brought it to school, carrying that quiet pride of someone giving away something they actually loved.
During the Christmas Party, everything suddenly turned sour for me when it was finally my turn to unwrap my gift. I tore the paper open and look what I'd found, a bar of laundry soap and a small packet of detergent.
I walked home in silence that afternoon. The sadness sat heavy behind my eyes, but I didn't let it show. I held it together, just barely, all the way home.
I knew my mother would have found the gift practical. Useful. And she would've been right. I understood that, even then. But understanding doesn't always make disappointment hurt less.
That day, I felt something I couldn't quite explain, not sadness over soap and detergent, not really. Sadness over something I had quietly hoped for, and simply never got.
Learning Paper Craft
Aside from Reynold Chiquote, two other classmates have stayed in my memory from that year: James Alegado and Ariel Quijano. It was Ariel, though, who left the deeper mark, not because of any remarkable feat, but because of the skill of his hands. He was the one who taught me paper folding.
Under his patient instruction, plain sheets of paper transformed into frogs that leapt the moment you pressed their backs, airplanes that you can raise and glide in the air, birds whose wings flapped with just a gentle tug of the tail. He folded each one with a precision that felt really very entertaining to a young enthusiast willing to learn new things.
At the time, it felt like nothing more than a way to fill the empty minutes between lessons. Years later, sitting at my desk at work, I found myself folding a paper frog entirely from memory, fingers moving on their own, as if they'd never forgotten. When I pressed its back and watched it hop across the table, a colleague's face lit up with the exact same delight I'd felt the very first time Ariel showed me how.
In that moment, something I realized: some lessons never really leave us. They aren't learned from textbooks or on an exam. They live in the smallest acts that simply passed by quietly, almost invisibly, from one child to another.
Even now, whenever I fold a paper frog or a paper bird, I'm always pulled back to that Grade Four classroom, to those carefree afternoons, and to a classmate whose real gift was never the paper folding itself, but the quiet legacy that he left that last decades.
The Coconut Husk Battle
In the main building, one of our regular chores was scrubbing the wooden classroom floor with bunot or dried coconut husks, the traditional Filipino way of polishing wooden floor, sometimes finished off with a light coat of paraffin until the floor gleamed a warm, honey-gold.
In the hands of a diligent student, the bunot did exactly what it was supposed to. Dull, scuffed floorboards turned polished and gleaming, the kind of shine that never failed to please a teacher.
But hand that same unassuming bunot to a room full of unsupervised nine-and ten-year-olds, even for just a few minutes, and it became something else entirely.
We'd plant one foot, sometimes both, on the husk, grab a classmate's shoulders for balance, and launch ourselves gliding across the floor like we were skating on ice.
The glide itself was thrilling. Losing control was somehow even better. Then someone would whisper the word that changed everything: gubat or "battle", that signals the game has started.
Two challengers would take opposite ends of the room and launch themselves forward, sliding full-speed toward each other. The rules were simple: knock your opponent's bunot loose without losing your own.
Chaos followed. Laughter, shrieks, collisions, triumphant cheers. We slid, crashed into desks, spun wildly off course, scrambled back up, and went again.
It was loud. It was reckless. It was completely irresistible.
And here's the twist: all that sliding actually polished the floor better than any careful scrubbing ever could. By the time our teacher walked back in, the room gleamed like glass.
We'd get scolded, sure, but never with much heat behind it. How could they stay angry, with the proof of their spotless floor shining right under their own feet?
Looking back now, I understand something about childhood I couldn't have named then: it had a way of turning the most ordinary chore into an adventure. Hand a child a coconut husk, and it becomes a pair of skates. Whisper one word gubat, an ordinary classroom transforms into a "battlefield", not into chaos born of anger, but into something built entirely out of laughter.
Those bunot battles never won us medals. No trophies, no recognition. But even now, they remain some of the happiest games of my childhood.
My Siblings' Achievement
That same year, I moved into the school's main building, in the room where the upper Sections One and Two held their classes, morning and afternoon sessions respectively. Even as a child, I could feel it the moment I stepped through those corridors: a kind of quiet pride that clung to the walls.
My older brother, Artemio Jr., or Junjun as we called him, had already been there ever since, now in Grade Five, Section One, morning session. He'd been in the top section every single year, an honor student from the start. He'd go on to graduate valedictorian.
My sister May carried the same weight of accomplishment. Her name was a fixture on the honor roll year after year, and she graduated salutatorian, the kind of achievement that, in a different household, would've been met with a celebration for the ages. But in our home, victories were met differently. Quietly.
My parents never made a spectacle of it. No grand gestures, no loud declarations of pride. Sometimes never even mind going to the awarding ceremony. But underneath that reserve, I could feel it, something deep, there's really, unmistakably, genuine pride.
By then, May and Glenn were already attending their high school classes at Abellana National School, one of Cebu City's highly respected public high schools in those days, sitting right between downtown and uptown.
Growing up in a family like that was equal parts inspiring and heavy. There successes seemed to come effortlessly, setting a bar that loomed over me. I wanted, in whatever small way I could manage, to become someone they'd be proud of too. I just hadn't found my own path yet. Not then.
A Childhood Full of Play
Beyond the school gates, my world exploded into noise, laughter, and endless play.
The neighborhood kids and I would vanish for hours at a time, reappearing only when hunger or our mothers' voices cutting through the dusk, finally called us home.
Looking back, I know now that season was one of the purest of my entire life. A time when I could disappear completely into play, free of the inhibitions and quiet weight that adulthood eventually piles on.
Our days ran on games: siatong, tago-tago, tigsu, dakop-dakop, bato lata, bitok-bitok, luthang, any child game you can name. Nobody handed us a rulebook. You learned by watching, by jumping in, until the rhythm of each game became second nature, something your body just knew.
We drifted from one game to the next as effortlessly as the afternoon shadows stretched across the yard, never tired, never short on reasons to laugh.
When I joined the girls, it was jackstones, Chinese garter, bagol, sometimes a few boys were tagging along too, and we'd play until the golden afternoon light slowly bled into evening. Even then, we didn't want to go home. There was always one more game worth staying for.
As dusk settled in, our games gave way to something else entirely: circles of children under a darkening sky, trading ghost stories in hushed, trembling voices. Every rustling leaf, every distant sound, seemed to prove the stories true. I can still name some of the faces who sat in that circle with me, Gina, Elvie, Glendale or Cindel, Nat, Ayen, Randy, names that echo now from somewhere deep, quiet, and half-forgotten.
Then there was the bayle, the neighborhood dance during our barrio fiesta, which later in my teenage years, it became a "disco." Just a short walk from our house, it pulled people in from every corner of the community. Music, colored lights flickering through the night, for a few evenings each year, our sleepy little neighborhood transformed into something electric.
My older brother, Junjun, moved through the crowd like he owned it, a small box of cigarettes and candies balanced in his hands, selling with a confidence that felt older than his years. Even then, he understood something important: wherever people gather to celebrate, opportunity is never far behind.
I watched him closely. And before long, I followed his lead, selling at the bayle myself, coins landing in my palm that felt heavier than their size ever should have.
It wasn't much. But to me, it was everything, the first quiet stirrings of independence, the pride of contributing something, however small, to my family.
Looking back now, those carefree afternoons and fiesta nights gave me far more than good memories. They taught me friendship. Resourcefulness. The simple, irreplaceable joy of belonging to a community where work and play, celebration and responsibility, were never separate things, they just thread woven into the same, ordinary, beautiful rhythm of everyday life.
The Kindness of My Dear Aunt
For a few months that school year, Papa's younger sister came to live with us. We called her Mama Presing. Unmarried, gentle, soft-spoken, her kindness felt almost otherworldly, especially in a household that wasn't always gentle.
While she stayed with us, she set up a small sari-sari store just outside our front door, bread, candies, simple snacks, kitchen condiments, etc., nothing that earned much. My brother Junjun built her a small wooden coin box for her earnings, and she tended that tiny enterprise with quiet dignity.
But what she sold was never really the point. What she gave our home mattered to me far more. Whenever Mama or Papa scolded me or when the punishment felt heavier than my small body could carry, Mama Presing would appear quietly at my side. Along with soft words, she'd slip a few coins into my hand from her own modest savings. It never changed anything, not really. But it was enough to quiet my tears. Enough to feel like someone, somewhere, understood.
I cannot recall a single moment she was unkind to me. Not one. In a life that's known its share of coldness, she remains, without question, one of the warmest people I've ever known. And yet, I have to admit something that still sits heavy in me. There were times I took coins from her cash box. Small amounts, taken quietly, especially on the days Mama had little or nothing left to give. But that was never really the point either. I know now she would never have said no if I'd simply asked.
I knew it was wrong, even as I did it. Knowing didn't stop me. That guilt has never fully faded, it lingers right beside the memory of her kindness, and the space between the two has become its own quiet reckoning, one far more lasting than any punishment she could ever have given me.
We lost her sometime in the late 1980s, maybe early '90s, I can't say for certain anymore. For a couple of years before she passed, I didn't see her at all. I was far away, in the seminary in Manila. Still, I managed two visits, during summer breaks, not long before she died.
On the first, I went with her and my father to a public hospital for an X-ray. By then she was already staying at my aunt's house.
On the second, still at my aunt's home, I found her frail, reduced almost to nothing, barely able to speak. But when she saw me, her face lit up, unmistakably. I sat beside her, and she hugged me and held my hand with whatever strength she had left. We talked for a while, I told her about Manila, about the seminary. Despite everything her body was going through, she seemed genuinely, quietly happy in that moment.
Those were hard times for our family. We couldn't afford to have her admitted to the hospital. In the end, all we could do was watch, helpless, as her life slipped away.
Even now, many years later, what stays with me isn't the hardship of losing her. It's the steady, quiet kindness she gave so freely, a kindness that still softens the edges of hardship and grief, every time I meet one.
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