ATMs

I don’t know with fellow promdis but ATMs do make me feel paranoid when I go out of town. Things like forgetting my PIN and the machine capturing my card make my heart throb like mad.

Of course I can save myself a lot of unnecessary palpitations by withdrawing enough cash in one single transaction rather than use the machine often. But then I have other fears!

I dread pickpockets so I shun wallets. (Besides I find lopsided derriere brought about by bulging wallets kitschy.) Instead I clasp in my palm a tiny purse into which I stuff my coins and bills that I fold into neat squares.

Ahhh but carrying cash during pre-ATM days was much simpler for a promdi like me. The day before leaving for Cebu where we studied, our mother would give us just enough money to see us through a day of land and a night of sea travel. The rest of the moolah was stashed either under our only sister’s bra (I’m not kidding!) or sewn inside the pocket of our eldest brother’s pantaloons where it was beyond the reach of pickpockets who didn’t have scissors for hands. Other times it was buried in a sack of rice that we carried all the way to Cebu You’re right, the first thing we did upon reaching our boarding house somewhere in Junquera Extension was to empty the sack and dig for cash in a mound of rice. (Let me digress. Dunno but Mama always insisted on sending us rice even if rice was much cheaper in Carbon. Perhaps she believed that eating nothing but homegrown rice would do us a lot of good, never mind if we had to spend a fortune for freight and handling.)

When all my five siblings graduated (I was the youngest), I was left to fend for myself. So I devised ingenious ways to stash my cash.

Flash forward/backward to 1990. It was my first year of employment and first official travel to Manila. I was at Rustan’s Cubao and I took fancy over a pair of oxblood Oleg Cassini shoes. Moments after I asked her for my size, the salesperson took the Oleg Cassini out of the box. From so much excitement, I took off my espadrilles so hastily that it was too late when I realized that bills dripped out of them while others clung to my bare feet like they grew out of my toes.

When she smiled sheepishly, I picked up the bills, trying hard to ignore the sympathetic winks Manuel Roxas, Manuel Quezon and Sergio Osmena gave me.