In case you are somehow uncertain in avoiding your bouts of depression when the ‘ber months come around, you certainly made me cry like a ninny after reading your birthday article for your Nay.  I was worried. I thought I ruptured my retina from ‘lachrymal waterworks’ overdose.  Like you, I have found the best guidance from my loving mother who, like your Nay, celebrated her birthday last September 18.  Mom’s 55 now, I think.  Mommy is still with us but my Papang passed away ten years ago.  Mommy taught me the alphabet and during my prep years, she would pull my eyelid when I write my letter A’s like the Chocolate Hills.  I think the yanking of the eyelid never worked at all because until now, I still write my A’s like the Chocolate Hills.  She also taught me not to cheat in Math, which I think is my good foundation in programming.

In reading your column, I somehow found one more reason to return to my first love – programming.  I am a third year law student now, and this second semester, I told my ‘colleagues in the study of law’ (they don’t want to be called schoolmates, I don’t know why) about my plans of taking a break.  They don’t know why.  Not because I never told them.  More likely, they won’t understand.  I will surely miss them.  They will surely miss me, too.  They will miss my annoying laughing out loud and bathroom jokes.  They will miss me when the dean’s computer bogs down.  Nobody will ‘accidentally’ erase the files of our forsaken grades anymore.  They will miss their handyman who fixes the toilet fixtures.  They will miss their president in the student government who declares a general assembly every week so we won’t have classes.  They will miss their buddy who chants ‘we law students must first break the law in order to understand it’.  They will miss my pirated CD’s. 

With my approaching semester break on hand, other than planning to grow hair in my armpits, I plan to refresh my knowledge in programming.  Software is protean – it changes in the pace of a heartbeat.  I have to cram all those years past, so I can find my home in the programming world.  I am interested in learning COBOL, the programming language which wasn’t taught in my college years because they thought it would go extinct.  I, too, thought it would go extinct.  My freshest memory of a COBOL book was in high school when I was learning QBASIC on my own in my brother’s office.  I never got the chance to open a page or two of that book and little did I know that COBOL and I would meet again, in this very crossroads of my life.  I already downloaded free stuffs at Zing COBOL together with the free COBOL tools from Fujitsu for a start from the Internet.  My first observation of COBOL is its specific position of the coding elements, which is ‘new’ for someone accustomed in C++ or Visual Basic.  Well, says one computer author, there are many ways of programming as there are raisins in California.  I say there are many ways of learning programming as there are many ways of skinning a cat. And I prefer it alive.  I mean, I prefer a raw plunge to COBOL, starting from scratch, building my way up by self-study. 

Programming gave me a false impression that I was very good.  And it sure felt good.  When I entered law school, the logic has the same application with the laws.  Well, at least for a freshman, I was an overnight sensation.  But law, as I later learned, involves concepts that defy even the common logic.  Depending on what side of the spectrum you are, this may or may be good for the order of our society.  I don’t feel bad taking a hilt in the study of law.  I don’t even regret taking up law.  In fact, I encourage everyone from all walks of like to study law.  Your legal rights do not come served in a silver platter, so you have to know it and demand for it.

For the whole world going against my plan of taking a break, my mother is there to understand my (in)decision.  Call it tough love, but this woman with kind eyes and rough hands knows what’s best for me.  She is sure disappointed because she expects me to become a lawyer soon but she understands.  A mother’s love does not question.  I may always be a pain in the neck, for not washing my own boxers, for not throwing maggot-infested pizza to the bin, and for smacking my younger sisters’ heads when they hide the remote control, but I’m trying to be a good person by finding my way back home.  Home is where the heart is.   I love programming and I want to return to it.  I will still go back to law school at some point in time, maybe when I’m already a big time programmer, or mafia of the black hat hackers.

Soon, I would have a family of my own and I would guide my children the way she guided me, only I would never pull my children’s eyelid until they learn their ABCs.  I would patiently understand the choices my children may make.  I would stay with them.  I would walk with them to the beach until the sun bows on our feet.  We would play in the rain and chase the pot at the end of the rainbow.  We would gaze at the stars and weave dreams from my mother’s past unfulfilled.  And to the best mother a hard-headed kid could hope for, Ma, for all the guidance and love, I love you more.

Manuel Rex Lallata, Jr., 26 is an IT graduate of the University of St. Louis, Tuguegarao City, Cagayan Valley.  His college dean did not allow him to shift to another course for the reason that he had a love-hate relationship with programming.  He is the information officer of the forestry sector, Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), Region 02.