The 12:00 Habit

It's been a very long weekend, no thanks to the super typhoon Egay. Because of this all of us here in Kalayaan have been lazy, too lazy to even feel the need to open a notebook and study for the Math17 midterms this Wednesday. Oh well. It's not our fault we've been stuck in the dorm for six consecutive days.


Lately my everyday morning routine has gone like this: I hear my phone ringing shrilly and I wake up for just a few seconds to check the time and involuntarily decide it's way too early to be up and about. Then I go back to sleep. I wake up again about two to three hours later, truly awake this time. I glance at my watch, realize I've overslept again and wonder why on Earth I didn't hear the alarm. Most of the time this scene takes place at 12:00 noon so I call this the twelve o'clock habit. I wake up late because a growing teen needs ten hours of sleep each night to stay healthy. On normal days when I'm not sick, stressed by school work or plagued by insomnia I stay up until about two or three in the morning. When I feel tired already I just hop into bed and fall asleep effortlessly. But yesternight and the night before that I was such a wimp and I just couldn't fall asleep.

Chakushin Ari Final, probably the worst horror movie I've ever watched, was the reason I couldn't sleep two nights ago. It wasn't scary at all but it freaked me out and I kept imagining luminous Japanese girls showing up in elevators and coughing up red jawbreaker look-alikes. So yes, I was incapable of sleeping with the silence and dimness of the dorm. I had to hook myself to Brgy LS, a radio station, so I could feel safe enough to fall asleep.

And yesterday Roshy, Jane and I went to Ateneo to meet Mary and Jen, two of our high school friends. We toured Trinoma, which is so crowded, and Eastwood, which is definitely a beautiful, expensive, amazing, expensive, brilliant, expensive place. When night fell we went back to the ADMU campus, watched T-girl eat her dinner and got round to telling each other ghost stories. And then Jen told this really creepy story that was wholesome compared to other stuff I've read but truly spine-chilling all the same - at least for the scaredy cat called me.

There is a place in the campus called Bellarmine Hall (in case I haven't spelled it correctly at least you know I'm not an Atenean) and it is rumored that at night, a lady pops up in the third floor of that building and waves hi to passersby. Apparently, the person she waved at must wave back or else she'll suddenly appear beside the ingrate and demand a sufficient reason for his or her impoliteness. And if you're too scared to think properly or just aren't creative enough she'll make you regret you ever passed by Bell that night.

What would you say to her if she suddenly swooped down from her perch to interrogate you?