day four

a year ago, one of my friends dared me to go one month without smoking. free dinner at friday’s was on the line. the date was september 15, 2007 at past 12. we were at nipa hut in pasig i think, i don’t know where exactly. i was with brader micoi, ivan, james and melgar and we were having a couple of bottles of beer. of course i was the only one smoking among them so it got kinda magnified and they made a big deal out of it saying i was smoking a lot more. i usually smoke a lot when i drink, i would say 2-3 sticks per bottle. so, mel challenged me to one month that i quit, starting september 16, 2007. i said i could do that, shook on it and we were set. ivan tried to add another month to it, i said he can kiss my ass with those famous lips of his hehe. so i was not allowed to smoke from september 16 to october 16. it meant that i would not be able to smoke on my bday that year. now that one month wasn’t so hard, lots of drinking and mahjong and other usual smoking oppurtunities happened but i got through it. of course, no way was i gonna pay for mel’s dinner at friday’s but i also wanted to kinda test myself a little. honestly i could have smoked one stick and mel won’t have any clue, but that’s not what i wanted to happen. so on the night of my october 16th, my birthday, at around 10pm after a good family dinner i smoked one stick. wait what? why you idiot you ask? before i explain that let me share something weird about myself quickly..

*segue* the time warp - i have this really weird um.. sickness? or abnormality? basically i wake up everyday and usually the first thing that comes to mind is to make sure what day it is. day as in monday, tuesday, thursday, saturday and so on. i don’t know how to explain it but i do sometimes forget which day it is. sometimes i only recall the right day when its already in the afternoon. that resulted into a lot of absences, making people wait, not show up at gimiks or parties, miss nfl games and a lot more. its probably the result of irregular sleeping habits because i kinda got good at that. now going back to the original story..

remember that the bet officially started on september 16, 2007. now of course that didn’t register with me at once. for my mind and my body, the earth officially makes a complete rotation only when i go to bed. yes my mind and body are in the medieval age and it believes i have my own time zone. so all the while, i thought we made the bet on september 15, 2007, the night we were drinking. i thought i was safe to smoke on my birthday. the fact that my friends pointed out that i can’t smoke on my birthday completely left my mind. i think it went to tibet and left me hangin all alone. the frustrating thing to add to that was that i smoked the bet-breaking stick at sprockin TEN O CLOCK AT NIGHT!!! i lost by 2 hours. it proved that i was really barangay ginebra, i choked in the final minutes. to make me look more stupid, i still didn’t know in the following days that i lost the bet. mel and i met again on october 18, thursday and i was proud that i won. if i recall, the conversation went like this:

mel: oh ano panalo ba ako sa pustahan natin?
dodi: asa. panalo ako, nabuo ko one month
mel: so di ka na magyoyosi talaga?
dodi: di noh! nagyosi na nga ako nung birthday ko eh. victory cigar
mel: OH!!! TALO KA!!
dodi: lul! anong talo? hanggang 15 lang kaya..
mel: tangek! hanggang sixteen!! diba nag-set tayo madaling araw ng saturday, september pipteen yun! ang official start is sunday, yun ang sixteen! nag-yosi pa nga kayo ni madz nung hapon ng sabado na yun diba?
dodi: weh? 15 ba yun?
mel: wahahaha! talo ka! libre mo ko!
dodi: pooota..

yeah i know. what a dumbass. such a loser, yaya. anyway, i didn’t treat mel at friday’s. i shared the bill when we treated mare and mae to lunch at pancake house a few weeks later and we were even.