Pinoy Games 101

courtesy of : http://tricolin.com/

Last weekend, my son told me that he needs a turumpo (top) for his PE class.

What kind of PE is that?
Oh, it's Filipino games.
Filipino games as in patintero,luksong-tinik,and the likes? (Filipino-childhood-street-games)
Yep!
What will you do with the turumpo?
Duh?! Of course I have to spin it.
But you don't know how.
Yep! Teach me.

Off we went to the palengke (public market) and bought 3 wooden tops, strings included. After getting three softdrink (soda pop) crown caps, then putting a hole in the middle of each crown with a 3"CW nail as the wedge, then threading the string through the cap, and finally doing the mandatory knots, we were ready for the turumpo lesson.

Dang! I can't make the top spin! Oh, the nail bit is off-center. (Poor quality. What do you expect? The turumpo is cheap at 20 Pesos, about $0.50 each). I got the other turumpo and walla! it spins... beautifully

As my grandson watched, my son practiced on his turumpo. After 15 minutes, he was able to do it. Next, I taught him how to catch and retrieve a spinning top off the ground. Okay. Done. Now, color the turumpo with different colored crayons. Why? To make it look colorful while it spins. Nice!

I just wonder: What made my son's school offer Filipino games as PE? Does it mean that fewer and fewer Pinoy kids are aware of the know-of and the know-how of Pinoy games? What happerned? My generation were the queens and kings of street games. We played patintero, taguan, luksong-tinik, biola, estatwa, and piko after school. The games went on for hours. As we did not have watches nor mobile phones back then, we knew it was time for dinner if one of our mothers calls out: Ano ba?! Uwi na. Kakain na. (Hey! Come home. It's time to eat.)

I was not the top queen of our street games. The queen of queens was either Solit or Pepot. They are sisters and they were so good I used to wish that I was their sister too so that I may have their super genes in playing street games.

My generation got their good share of excersise by playing physical games.

Nowadays, kids prefer to stay glued to their computers playing online games or mesmerized by their X-boxes, PS(3, is it?), Gameboy, etc. No physical activity at all!: unless they are enrolled in worthy-weekend-programs-like soccer-taekwondo-ballet-hiphopdance-basketball- and the likes. Some kids are missing a lot by not knowing and playing Pinoy games.

Great! I think I'll get 1.00 for my top spinning test.
You'll actually have a test for that?
Yep! Don't you know that this PE class is an in-demand class? The school offers about 5 classes of Filipino Games every semester and it's always filled to capacity.
You mean there are actually university-age kids interested in Pinoy street games?
Yep! It's a common sight to see students taking this subject to leave their class with torn shirts, torn knees and torn pride. Hahaha. They love the games!

Ummm... it's never too late to learn, I suppose.