'till next week

Cool people hang out with their friends. Attached people hang out with their partners. I hang out with my aging parents. I had a grand time with them yesterday afternoon. After going to Antipolo to attend to some important matter, we drove to Megamall to chill out and to finally have my father’s first album recorded. He’s been telling me he wanted to try out Karaoke King, a little booth where you go in, do an approximation of singing, and come out with your very own CD complete with a tacky inlay bearing your pic. Apparently, he’s not satisfied with just a cassette recording of his voice accompanied only by my piano. It just had to be in CD form and it had to sound like a real album. If Search for a Star had a category for senior citizens, my father would surely join it. In fact, if I remember it right, he did join one singing contest for antediluvian folks in a now-defunct TV show, and he bagged the first prize. He can be flaunty like that.

Being a doting son, I accompanied my showbizy father, with my mother in tow, to his first ever studio recording. He was more excited than a boy about to go on his first fuck.

“Do you have songs for ancient guys?” I asked the Karaoke King guy in Tagalog. He said they had a handful—some standards, remakes, and their re-arranged but unreleased versions. After leafing through their dog-eared songbook, we finally chose one Perry Como and four Frank Sinatra ditties. After that, my father set off on his recording stint.

The technician turned on the loudspeakers so that people within the vicinity would hear the recording. A few passers-by stopped and curiously peeked through the glass walls of the booth— some smiled; others looked amazed. I couldn’t tell if it was my father’s smooth crooning that got them or the fact that the booth contained a shabby-looking 70-year-old guy enjoying himself like a teeny-bopper. Probably both. I caught myself smiling proudly for being my father’s son.
My mother and I waited pleasantly, occasionally giggling, especially when my father messed up the lyrics of Sinatra’s My Way. I didn’t know hanging out with one’s folks was this fun. Or maybe I just miss them so much because I only get to see them weekends.

After getting the CD, my father gave the technician a lecture on how sucky the local music industry has become, preferring debonair singers who can’t sing rather than old but talented guys like him. I briefly imagined septuagenarians dancing and singing on Sunday variety shows on TV and cringed at the thought of seeing my father among them.

I walked them toward the other end of the mall where they had parked. I didn’t have to, really, but I just wanted to spend some more time with them before I head back to my boarding house.

At the exit, I said goodbye. My father lightly touched my godless back and gave me his standard “God bless you so on and so forth” parting message. I watched them turn around and walk away, my mother holding on to my father’s arm. They wobbled their way through the crowd and lost their faces there, becoming just an odd, old couple on their way home.

I had a great time with you, guys. 'Till next weekend.