Lola Dading and Bin Laden

In a twist of genius, Bin Laden released an audio PA addressed to the Arab world on the eve of Pres. Obama’s much-hyped speech in Egypt. He’s basically cautioning his flock, okey, you can have your boy-crush on Obama but let’s not be naïve here, he’s wearing the same suit as his predecessor. The man, he’s pretty old school - an audio message in this day and age? This is one for the books.

In the early 80s, at the peak of the petro-dollar boom, OFWs in the Middleast would send dozens of taped messages to their loved ones back home. That was all the rage.

Fast track to the early 90s - this became a private joke between me and an HS classmate who migrated to Canada. For a while, we exchanged correspondence with intense frequency and one time, he asked if his letters bored me to tears so he would just send cassette tapes of his message instead. “Just imagine I am in Saudi instead of Ontario,” he advised.

Then nasty, we would poke lame fun at Black hip-hop stalwarts with their blinding bling-bling, just copying Pinoy Saudi-fashion. Back then, understatement was a foreign idea. I remember a neighbor who had huge, and I mean huge, gold rings in practically all his fingers, so huge, it could choke you to death. And an attention-grabbing necklace that could whip the life out of the wearer by its sheer weight.

And the raging street humor at that time was “Lupig ka han ak Lolo” where the famous Johnny Pusong and his friends would play an uproarious game of upraise as to whose Lolo was more smartass.

And in a slight variation, I say “lupig ka han ak Lola.” Lola Dading, my paternal grandmother, was a woman who embodied her own sovereignty. She smoked and revved up with the boys. One summer when I was in Grade 2 or 3, she pulled me to her side, “there’s something I want to show you” as if it was King Arthur’s Holy Grail or some mystical power she was about to bequeath.

To her glee and my disappointment, she made me listen to her own recordings of my baby-talk when I was barely 2 years old. She purportedly preserved that for her son, who was away in India to study so he won’t feel so alienated not witnessing some firsts of his first-born. I wonder where those tapes are. Maybe me and Bin Laden could swap.

The latest Bin Laden tape may be a stroke of genius but the man has nothing on my Lola.