Stone, run, stone.
Sprint, breathe—tag.
It was yet another beautiful warm sunny day in 2002. An upperclassman has excitedly and manually rung the school bell with a stick, signaling the end of a school day. Students hurriedly made their way out of their classrooms, but none looked more anxious than the five of us—me, the funny kid, the reserved kid, the bright kid, and the cheeky kid. We were anticipating a big rematch of Tigso—us, the lowerclassmen, against the upperclassmen.
Allow me to take you to the day before.
As usual, after school for the five of us typically entails adventures and games, but none more played by us than our favorite game—Tigso, also known as Agawan Base, which is a running game or a variation of tag or capture-the-flag. We usually play it with anyone and try to match individual skills and speed to even out the teams. However, on this particular day, for reasons I barely can recall other than us just being kids full of guts, we decided that teams would be based on grade levels. Lowerclassmen consist of us kids between first through third grades and the upperclassmen between fourth through sixth grades. Yes, we were damn ballsy, and one can probably predict the outcome of this game by now, given that the upperclassmen have all the advantages—speed, physical attributes, experience, and strategies. Thus, on the first day of this match, the upperclassmen have mercilessly obliterated us on our favorite game, but our fiery spirit remained unextinguished, so we demanded a rematch to be held the next day after school, leading us back to the present day of this story.
When we were kids, everything looked humongous, including the playing field where we now stood, facing the upperclassmen. One can see the reserved kid and me shuffling in the background, looking for a rock as a mark for our base while the rest of my teammates prepare themselves to run—or get captured. The tension continues to build up on our side while the upperclassmen were relaxed and confident as ever. Once our marks were set, we began our rematch. We were drenched in sweat as we ran, attempted to tag opponents, got tagged multiple times, became prisoners, lost our shoes, laughed, and even got a few wounds and scratches—but most of all, we had a lot of fun despite our annihilation by the upperclassmen 🤣. We were kids, and others would have expected us to begrudgingly cry or throw tantrums, but not us. Our losses did nothing to crush our spirits and motivations, and it certainly did not stop us from playing the game over and over with the upperclassmen—well, definitely just not against them.