Breakfast for Dinner

A Short Story

“OK, kids, settle down.” Mrs. Maturan stood in front of the kindergartners noisily arranging their little chairs in what six-year-olds thought of as a semi-circle.

“Teacher, teacher, teacher, miss, miss, miss, MA’AM MATURAN!” Of course, it was Marita. She was the tallest of the children, you couldn’t miss her, yet she was always demanding even more attention. “Ma’am, ma’am, Paulo Castro doesn’t know what a semi-circle is. I told him it’s half of a circle, but he keeps asking ‘Which half?’ I think he’s stupid.”

“Marita, darling,” Mrs. Maturan said firmly, “No one is stupid here.”

“But, but, but, Teacher, Paulo Castro . . .”

“Time to sit down now, Marits. Everyone, quiet down. Sit.”

In the daily miracle of school, the classroom actually approached silence as the young minds focused on their teacher.

“Good evening, children,” Mrs. Maturan began, “Tonight is Tuesday night. It is a half-moon night.”

In unison, the children replied, “Tonight is a Tuesday night. It is a half-moon night.”

Selena Castro lingered outside the classroom door as the knots of parents and yayas began drifting out of the school building. She had heard that self-righteous, bullying little bitchesa Marita cast aspersion on her son and had considered marching in to complain; but Mrs. Maturan handled the matter perfectly. Besides, Selena had to get to work.

The drive from Southgrove School to the Sta. Rosa central business district wasn’t particularly long or difficult, but she was going to be on the road at the peak of the rush hour and she wanted to be at her desk in the bank when it opened at 9:00 p.m. The ten-lane South Luzon expressway was bound to be packed heading into the city after the long weekend. Fortunately, San Miguel/Smart Infra had installed solar floodlights all along the highway. People drove more sanely under the lights. There was no accounting, however, for the behavior of the motorcycle and scooter riders at any time of night or day. Ever since Congress forced the tollways to open their barriers to all sorts of two- and three-wheelers, you never knew what was going to happen on the roads. Out-of control 100 cc bike sliding under a truck. Slowpoke e-bike hogging the fast lane. Filtering motorcyclist snapping off side view mirrors. Unending protest convoy of Angkas quasi-employees clogging the off-ramps. Riders followed no rules. Better not to think about them at all; otherwise, you might build up enough rage to plow right into a group of the arrogant sonovabitches. Ah, life in the 2030s—from rage to rage. At least Paulo was safely in school already.

Anita Maturan had been a pre-school teacher for over two decades, and though it had been her first and only job, she felt like she had seen it all. She could hardly believe that her first students were college graduates now. None of them ever came back to see her, but she kept track of a few of them. Two were in med school. U.P. Medicine, in fact. Supposed to be the top school. Good to know for when she got old and sickly. For now, however, there was this batch. “So, boys and girls, where were we when we last saw each other? What were we doing? Anyone?”

The cutest little girl Dahlia popped up to her full height—three and a half feet on tippy toe—her big, round Japanese animé eyes wider than usual, “We were discussing how the dominance of artificial intelligence or AI resulted in the homogenization of Filipino creativity in television.”

“And films,” added Paulo standing up beside her.

Miggy Boy leaned over to Timmy Boy and said under his breath, “Those two again.” Miggy Boy had a crew cut and wore a denim jacket in an approximation of a hoodlum belied by his Mickey Mouse t-shirt, while Timmy Boy had the classic sidekick look about him, nondescript.

Mrs. Maturan sat in her big chair and said, “All right, I remember now, but wasn’t that after we learned a new song . . .”

“‘I’m A Little Teapot’,” volunteered Marita.

“Y-e-a-h,” Paulo Castro said looking up at the ceiling and running his right hand through his hair as if to say, Oh, boy.

Dahlia was not be deterred. “Ma’am, do you think maybe we can skip Music class and nap time and go straight into Science History today? I’ve been thinking about AI all weekend.”

“Well, were you all able to read Yuval Noah Harari’s new book?,” asked Mrs. Maturan.

“Yes, and . . . ” Dahlia answered.

“Not me,” said Paulo sadly.

“Not me neither,” said Miggy Boy, leading to a chorus of No’s and Not-Me’s from the rest of the class.

“I read it,” said Marita.

After glancing disbelievingly at Marita, Paulo looked directly at Mrs. Maturan, “My parents still don’t know that I can read at that level. They believe I just play games on my iPad. I don’t think they’re ready to know. Or they’re willfully ignoring the signs. Anyway, I don’t want to shock them. What is it with some of your generation, Mrs. Maturan? Were their brains fried by a solar flare or something?”

“Talk of generations. My Boomer grandmother still speaks gibberish to me on Zoom, like ‘Oooh, my bwaybee Dahlia, say something to Wowa. Ahahaha, abububu, ajijiju.’”

The class was in stitches.

How do I explain this?, Anita thought. She hardly understood it herself. In just the last couple of years, the kindergarten kids had gotten smarter and smarter. More intelligent—that’s the word they’d use. Anita had a theory about evolution that she probably picked up in a book she couldn’t remember reading: Contrary to the popular notion that progress up the evolutionary scale took place slowly, incrementally over eons, there were sudden quantum leaps from one level to a completely new one. In other words, human evolution took place in a series of revolutions separated by periods of quiet. A steep hike to a plateau followed by another climb to a relatively flat area and so on. Anita had seen the same pattern in the development of individual children. After weeks of struggling with, say, a mathematical concept, there’d be a day of clarity—a Eureka! moment—when a child simply got it and could finally move on to something more difficult. The question was what triggered the giant leaps.

It couldn’t just be the hours of screen time. Parents had been using phones and tablets to keep their toddlers occupied for decades before this amazing jump in verbal skills. Also, it seemed to happen so fast that most parents couldn’t keep up. Many weren’t even aware. Maybe the trigger was something Maynilad Prime was putting in the water. Hehe. But then, why weren’t adults getting smarter, too? More likely it was a particular game or program that only children were using on their devices, Anita thought. Something powered by AI maybe.

“Stop disparaging older generations, you guys,” Mrs. Maturan said. “Without us, you wouldn’t be here.”

“Without you, we wouldn’t have such a screwed up planet,”countered Paulo. “Fifty degrees Centigrade in Tuguegarao yesterday. What the hell!”

“Hell talaga. But that’s not Mrs. Maturan’s fault, right, ma’am?” said Dahlia.

Miggy Boy whispered, “Sipsip talaga.”

“All right, yes, my generation and those before me could have done a better job of caring for the environment. We have no choice but to take responsibility for that, but we’re trying our best to save the situation now. It’s really bad, but personally I have hope. I look at you little geniuses, and I have lots of hope. BUT you have to do the reading assignment. Paulo, help me to understand. Why do you say you might “shock” your parents if you let them know how well you can read? I would think they’d be super proud.”

“Ma’am, I should say that I don’t want to risk shocking my parents. It’s not a certainty that they would be. I just lose too much if they do react badly,” said Paulo.

“Lose? How so? Lose what?”

“Look at me, ma’am. I may have unlocked portions of my brain, but I still have the body of a six-year-old.” He was slightly taller and pudgier than Dahlia, but not by much. He was wearing a t-shirt that barely covered his tummy and long pants, not shorts, but they were striped clown pants that his mom Selena thought looked cute. “I need my parents to keep taking care of me. Like, I can’t drive myself to school. I can’t cook. I can’t shop. I can’t fend for myself in this size-ist society. I need my parents to continue thinking that I’m a helpless baby.”

“But why do you think they’ll react badly?”

“Ma’am, do you think they’ll be happy to find out that I’m ten times more intelligent than they are? They won’t know what to do. They’ll be afraid of me. My father is an HR manager and my mom, an assistant bank manager. These are narrow-minded people who can’t deal with anything out of the ordinary. They’ll be shocked into paralysis.”

“My father is a Progressman!” Marita interjected.

“You mean progressive congressman,” said Miggy Boy, “You’re such an idiot, Marita. I hope your Communist parents send you to the hinterlands to do ‘research’.”

Paulo turned to Miggy Boy. “I hope your Fascist parents send you to the PMA to get hazed.”

“Can we not fight?” Dahlia said sweetly. “We’re so much better than this.”

At the bank, Selena had arrived just as the doors were opening. Fortunately, there were no people waiting outside to get in. She could take a moment to settle down at her desk and contemplate her life before dealing with bank business. Paulo had been a little less of a pain getting ready for school this morning. He’d worn the clothes she’d set out for him without any complaint. Thank God for small blessings. Meanwhile, her husband Carlos was being a dick again. His company had a work-from-home policy on Mondays and Tuesdays so he just slept in until 10:00 or 11:00 o’clock at night. He was no help at all. Oh, well, at least he gave me Paulo. She pressed the space bar to fire up her computer.

When she looked out into the customer area, she saw there was no one at all waiting to be served. The tellers were idle, gossiping about the daytime soaps they were following probably. It dawned on Selena that it had been like this for quite a while now. She still expected her branch to be busy—as busy as the old days when she was a teller—but it just wasn’t so. She had to admit that digital banking was much more convenient. People could deposit, withdraw, transfer, pay, and even invest using apps. Not only more convenient, but potentially more lucrative. All the apps now had higher interest rates and offered rebates on top of discounts. Wait. Did this mean brick-and-mortar banks are going away? My career in branch banking is coming to an end? What will I do? How had I not seen this coming?

Or, maybe, just maybe, people didn’t want to go to the bank at night. President Sara had mandated the shift in waking hours to nighttime five years ago because daytime temperatures across the country during the summer months had become dangerously high due to climate change. An unconventional idea, to say the least, and there was a lot of noisy resistance, but soon after all government offices opened only from 8:00 pm to midnight and 1:00 to 5:00 a.m. and the public schools shifted to night classes as well, it was just easier for the private establishments to follow suit. In the beginning, there was a run on coffee, Red Bull, and Cobra, but before long people got used to the schedule. It was, in fact, cooler at night. It worked out so well that, instead of just a summer time solution, it became the norm all year round. The MRT and subway happily ran throughout the night. Noontime shows on TV became midnight shows. Doctors played golf under lights in the early evenings and showed up at their clinics at 10:00 p.m. Not everybody simply flipped from a.m. to p.m. though. Malls, for example, opened at 7:00 p.m., not 10:00 p.m., and closed at 6:00 a.m. so that patrons could completely avoid the sun. Dinner reservations were made for 4:00 a.m. If there was one thing Selena truly enjoyed about this set up, it was having tapsilog at night. Technically, it was breakfast food for the breakfast meal under the new rules, but call her old-fashioned, it still felt like having breakfast for dinner. But then, maybe, people didn’t want to go to the bank at night for fear of being held up in some dark corner. Crime had increased nationwide, but that was a different story.

Still baffled by the phenomenon of six-year-olds reading at college level unbeknownst to their parents, Mrs. Maturan decided to probe deeper into the children’s family situations. In the past, gifted children were supported, encouraged, even obliged to excel by their parents; but in the case of her class of bright kids, many of the parents were in the dark.

Most of the kids’ stories were unremarkable. Timmy Boy, Miggy Boy’s sidekick, was the middle child of college instructors. He had secretly read the college texts they left lying around, but couldn’t make heads or tails of what they contained. “I think I lack the life experience to understand those books,” he said.

Dahlia had been put in night care very early by her parents who were both high-powered executives at multinational corporations. Her parents knew that she was an advanced reader, but they didn’t think much of it because they had also been precocious children in their own ways. What they didn’t realize was how advanced Dahlia was.

At first, Miggy Boy had refused to open up about his family, but after all his other classmates had spoken, he said flatly, “My father is a police general who visits occasionally because we are only his second family. When he comes, he beats my mother.”

Too stunned and too young to know about such things, the class fell silent. As tears welled up, Mrs. Maturan could only say, “Thank you, Migs. Thank you, class, for all your stories.”

At 12:30 a.m. Mrs. Maturan called the bank. “Hello, Mrs. Castro, this is Anita Maturan, Paulo’s teacher?”

“Oh, yes, yes, Mrs. Maturan. I saw you this evening. Thank you, by the way, for handling Marita so smoothly.”

Anita didn’t know what Selena was talking about, but it wasn’t relevant anyway. She pushed on, “Paulo is still here with me in school. It seems your husband has forgotten to pick him up again.”

That good-for-nothing dick. “I’m so sorry. I”ll call him immediately . . . but since it’s already nearly one o’clock, do you think Paulo can just stay for the after-midnight session again? It won’t hurt for him to get some extra schooling, right?”

Anita wanted to say Paulo’s parents should pay double tuition if they kept “arranging” for him to stay for two sessions a day. Besides, they’re the ones who need extra schooling, not Paulo. Instead, however, she said, “Of course, Mrs. Castro, we would love to have him in our class again. Please just make sure to pick him up at 5:00 a.m.”

“Caloy! You forgot to pick up Paulo again.”

“I know, I know. I decided to give Bantay a bath and lost track of time.”

“You pay more attention to that dog than to your own son.”

“Hindi naman, hon.”

“Pick up Paulo at five. He’ll attend the after-midnight session.”

“Ok.”

After spending a whole day together, sharing Mrs. Maturan’s lunch, as they sat alone in the classroom at 5:15 a.m. waiting for Mr. Castro to arrive, Paulo felt as if a special bond had grown between him and his teacher. “Ma’am, did you see Dahlia and Miggy Boy leaving the classroom tonight? They were holding hands.”

“Were they? I didn’t notice.”

“Why do nice girls fall for bad boys?”

“Ahhh, you’ve hit on one of the eternal questions with no answer,” Anita replied sagely. “Don’t worry about it. As Maverick’s commander once told him, ‘Son, you’re writing checks your body can’t cash.’”

“The correct quote from Topgun is ‘Your EGO is writing checks your body can’t cash.’ My ego has nothing to do with this.”

“Ok, smarty clown pants. If you’re so smart, maybe you can answer the question that’s been bugging me all day: How come your parents don’t know how smart you kids are?”

“Typical of an older person to go for the generational conflict. Ma’am, you’re missing the more important question here.”

“Which is?” Anita asked.

“Why are we such advanced readers in the first place?” Paulo replied.

“Uhuh, so, why?”

“Most people would miss it because the cause and effect seem unrelated, but once you see it, it becomes obvious. Two contemporaneous events: the wrenching change to nighttime waking hours and the bizarre rise of verbal skills among the very young. Coincidence? I think not. I believe functional MRI studies will show that synapses that fired in strange portions of the brain at night when we were sleeping, giving rise to fantastic or prophetic dreams, continued firing when we started working and studying at night, thus leading to unprecedented abilities. Remember when people used to say ‘Let me sleep on it’ and woke up with a solution. Humans are smarter at night, not because they are sleeping, but because it’s night time when our brains function differently. We just accidentally tapped into this ability.”

“I don’t buy it,” said Anita. “Why aren’t graveyard shift security guards geniuses like you?”

“Because you’re leaving out one essential element. The brains have to be young.”

Mrs. Maturan had no response.

They were both lost in thought when they heard the knock on the open door. Mr. Castro was peeking in. “Hi, I’m here to pick up Paulo.”

“Finally,” muttered the boy.

Outside in the corridor, Mrs. Maturan saw Bantay sitting upright looking at the poster she had printed up on her computer and taped to the wall—No Pets Allowed in the Classroom. Some Children May Have Allergies. The dog seemed to be reading the poster.

Maybe it was something in the water.

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