The paspasurot would later become a regular first grader. The confirmation came when I was made a Cub Scout, the only one from Grade 1 to be a Cub Scout at that time. Cub Scouts were mostly second and third graders. Boy Scouts, on the other hand, came from Grades 4 to 6. Being the smallest, I was always at the end of the line of marchers, and the follower, except of course when the order was “To the rear, march!”, then I would be the first. My first test as a Cub Scout came when I was designated by Maestra Moning as the troop delegate to a tree-planting seminar in our town’s central school. “Be sure to go there in complete uniform,” she reminded me. I borrowed the socks of my elder brother Danny, who was also a Boy Scout delegate of our school in that seminar. Danny’s socks were much too big for me, so I used rubber bands to keep them up. “And be sure to pay attention, because you have to give an echo seminar when you come back,” my teacher reminded me. I gave my first echo seminar to my fellow Cub Scouts when I went back to school. “Please be a buddy to your cousin, he has difficulty reading,” my teacher told me. My teacher was so confident that I could be a tutor as early as the first grade. Willy, my cousin of the first degree, would sleep over in our house and we would read our abakada (alphabet) book and do our homework together. Back then, we were using the fat black pencils with no erasers. “Here, use this!” my teacher said as she handed me a two-color rabbit eraser, one side white for erasing pencil marks and one side gray rubber for erasing ink marks. She had caught me erasing using my index finger wet with my own saliva. “I don’t want to see you again doing that. Fingers are not erasers,” she admonished. Being the youngest in class, I was also the smallest. Bigger and rowdier classmates would bully the smaller kids during recess and play time. Maestra Moning was always there to caution us not to hurt each other; sometimes she was smiling, other times
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