Worms

September 10, 2007

It’s been a while since my last post and the reason was much more mundane this time. My computer crashed due to the virus in the system. As of last check, there were five worms and 2,443 malicious spywares in the computer so it’s a wonder it didn’t crash earlier. The anti-virus software was no use either as the virus/es rendered it impotent.  

How could a worm do so much damage?

I remember when I was a child many summers ago when our father forced us to drink Combantrin to deworm us. Papa said not to worry because we’re just going to shit the dead worms when we defecate. Au naturél baby!

So Hakuna Matata, right?

After a couple of days, we played in the backyard totally forgetting the whole Combantrin episode. We were squatting on the earth playing with jolens, or marbles if you will. The game is pretty simple: you draw a circle on the soil where you set the marbles. The number of marbles inside the circle might vary from the number of players and how much the players are willing to bet. Then some six to seven feet from the circle you draw a straight line where the game commences. You get down on your knees and use your thumb and your pointer finger to fling that marble or pambato towards the cluster of marbles inside the circle and whichever marble that gets nudged outside the circle is yours. The winner gets the most marbles and the bragging rights.   

Of course, we didn’t see the sense of wearing drawers then, (that’s underwear for you, non-British readers) because our uncircumcised shaft was barely two inches long (Unlike today, ehem! When it’s already 2 ½ inches long. Erect. Bwahahaha!).

Okay, you didn’t need to know that.

Anyway, my youngest brother bent over because it was his turn, right? We were directly behind him and we saw something violently moving from inside his short pants. Naturally, we were curious and tugged at his shorts and the thing fell. It was the biggest worm I ever saw.

Even as I write this post, trusting the dimensions of the worm on my fading memory, I still couldn’t believe the size of that thing. That was no worm; that was a snake!

It was about three feet long and about the diameter of a pansit lomi. And it was thrashing fiercely. When my brother saw the worm he dashed straight towards where my father and uncles were, the worm still suspended from his buttcrack like Son Gokou’s hairy tale in the anime series Dragonball Z.    

When my father and uncles saw it, they jumped in fright. Such sissies, really. At least they managed to hold my brother down so he’d stop running around. He screamed, however, every time the worm touched his leg. The next problem was obvious: who’s going to yank the worm away from my brother’s anxious ass?

Well, the houseboy volunteered but he wasn’t touching that thing with his bare hands, fuck you very much. So he picked up a piece of paper marked Lion-Tiger katol from the ground and while my father and uncle held my brother, the houseboy pulled the worm/snake and I swear I heard it pop.   

So, how could a worm do so much damage?  

Well, when my father and uncles jumped, one of them smashed his shin on the edge of the table and the Tanduay bottle they were drinking toppled over, spilling its contents; the blocks of ice spattered on the ground and my uncle suffered a cut on his shin. Blood was everywhere, not least of which came from my brother’s ass from the worm’s sharp teeth, and our game of marbles was aborted.

You heard about the Butterfly Effect? This is the Combantrin Effect. You drink a tablet of that crap and you shit worms for real.

Papa told us later that when they were young, my lolo also had them dewormed. His brother had the same experience as my younger brother with a slight, albeit disgusting, difference: the woozy worm found itself on my uncle’s nostrils.

Thanks to that bit of unnecessary information, the next few days were a torture. Maybe amid all that ruckus, he forgot something possibly life-changing to an impressionable child: I, too, swallowed a pill of Combantrin, remember?

And oh, we spent P750 for the computer’s repair.  Fucking worms!