
I first encountered acting when I was about to graduate from elementary. My Filipino teacher was organizing a play sponsored by a popular chocolate milk drink and they needed someone who looked malnourished enough to play the role of the child who just didn’t want to drink his milk. She asked me to run to her as if she was my mom. Apparently even that I couldn’t do convincingly and so the role went to someone else. Thank God, or so I thought.
In every high school in the country there is that English or Filipino teacher who just has to stage a play, a play which one way or another would involve that stereotypical boy whose main purpose in life is to be his father’s punching bag. Unluckily I always fit the bill. In my freshman year my English teacher asked me to audition, which I did. I managed to disappoint them with my “acting skills.” I got off the hook. For sophomore year the play was about cock fighting so I enjoyed a year of tranquility knowing that the organizers would not stoop so low as to dress someone like a chicken on a cockfight. And then came junior year.