One Last Esmiringhoy

     Many years ago, I’d always start my day with a coffee and a newspaper (usually broadsheets). Every day, without fail, we’d have one in the house. I even wrote once to a broadsheet sports columnist about a certain sport controversy, and he put out my letter, the whole of it, to my shock, on his column, saying that he agreed with my opinion. Lol.

     Now, for the past few years, I’d only buy a newspaper twice a year, to help prove that an older relative pensioner is still alive and revalidate her account.

     Nowadays, you really don’t need to buy newspapers if you have social media.

     And speaking of newspapers/news, three news reports subsequently rolled out of my social media feed yesterday: one is truly tragic, another one is tragicomic, and the last one, lots of people say, is, well, hopeful. The tragic news: A massive cross fell on a priest while he was delivering his sermon, killing him.

     The tragicomic one: a wife, a guest on a radio program, while agreeing to separate from her husband, whom she accused of infidelity, had one last request. “Bago tayo maghiwalay,” she said wistfully. “Mag-esmiringhoy muna tayo para last na lang na ano…”

    “Esmiringhoy” is a Visayan term for “sexual intercourse.”

     The husband, sadly, refused.

     The last, and hopeful one, according to people who hate authoritarian leaders, is that Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s supreme leader, might be dead, after allegedly suffering a brain hemorrhage. The news, it’s turning out, is false.

     Really, I miss regularly doing esmiringhoy, er, buying newspapers.