THE FETUSES

(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, A LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 11 JULY 2008)

Fresh from college, young people converge at an advertising agency, all equipped with what they learned from top universities in Manila and with a vision of a future in which they each will play a role no less than the lead.

BLURB
I live in that solitude that is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity. —Albert Einsten

The oldies, or so they called themselves self-deprecatingly, are happy to take young blood under their wing, if only to inject something new into the stream of day-to-day routine. Some, for sure, have only the best interest of the kids in mind, at least according to their own personal notion of what’s good and what’s bad, and look forward to sharing what they know to the so called emerging generation, the next in line. Others take it simply as a matter of course: The workload is getting heavier and there is a need for help and, taking into consideration the company budget, they settle for greenhorns, hoping against hope that eagerness and enthusiasm will more than make up for lack of experience and potential will eventually translate to performance.

To the young ones, ranging in age from 19 to 21, the workplace is a brave new world all compressed into two floors of a building in the central business district. Instinctively, they look around, hoping for a glimpse of their own future in the way the bosses carry themselves and the way they carry out their tasks, as well as in their things, their cars, their clothes, the words and gestures they use to communicate, what they prefer for lunch, where they go in the evenings, and whom they go with.

Some may have found an inkling of what’s ahead: This is the life I’m going to have when I reach the top, but most, based at least on the turn of events later on, decide this is hardly even step one of the ladder and the top is yet beyond view.
In the meantime, the cravings of youth cannot be sidestepped on the road to the more adult goals of success and security. Inevitably, with so much in common, the young ones band together, first maybe over coffee at Greenbelt, then regularly over lunch, merienda, dinner, after-dinner drinks, midnight snacks following late-nights at the clubs, breakfast in the wake of all-nighters, and weeklong adventures out of town and even out of the country.

At this particular advertising agency, the friendship that forms among the entry-level employees is more than a case of the culture of fraternities and sororities extending beyond the college campus. It becomes a clique that soon grows into a collective force the executive office, from the creative directors all the way to the president and CEO, soon begin to acknowledge. Affectionately and almost officially, they name this young group The Fetuses, but, at least according to one senior vice president during a drunken moment at a beach company outing, these fetuses not only have teeth, but fangs, too. True enough, not only does this clique exclude some unfortunate others during lunch breaks and after-work fun, it also, to some extent, decides how happy these “barbarians,” especially if they belong to the same age group, will be and, often consequently, how long they will stay in the company.

On a stormy evening, taking advantage of the “rare privilege” of having one of the fetuses in his car for a free ride home, one of these unfortunate outsiders confesses, “Maybe you think I don’t care, but I feel so sorry for myself that when you guys are at the audio-visual room and I cannot seem to bring myself to join you or that when you guys go out for lunch, I always have to be left behind.”

Suddenly moved by their conscience, The Fetuses slowly integrate this outsider into their inner circle, although many of them who went to university with this “boisterous, obnoxious fat guy” admit they could never have imagined having a beer bong with him in college. “Well,” argue the more reasonable members of the gang, “this is not college anymore. We are ‘professionals’ now.” Reason among the majority, who also have fangs to show when they find the need to snarl, prevails and soon this outsider is in the club. But, sadly, not for long: One wrong move and he is back in the same predicament, feeling sorry that he has to stay behind when The Fetuses break for lunch.

Fast forward and this is the future that does not look anything like what practically all of the Fetuses glimpsed back then because they now belong to industries outside of advertising, where every single one of them is on top of their game. The members of the clique remain friends, now godfathers and godmothers to each other’s children. At the workplace, where some of them reign over as top executives, many now have their own Fetuses. During get-togethers, they wonder if like they used to do, today’s fetuses also make fun of the “old fogeys” behind their backs. As for “the boisterous, obnoxious fat guy,” who almost but never did belong to their group, no one knows much about, although there is every reason to believe he also made it in one piece in this “future.” Looking back, The Fetuses have no regrets but wish they were kinder. The people who make up your life are not always your choices, except perhaps at higher, metaphysical levels, but your friends you at least reserve the right to choose.

Still, The Fetuses can only heave a collective sigh of relief that karma did not choose to activate itself. After all, they were young, invincible, therefore reckless. But now that they are older, supposedly wiser, they know it’s a small world. Easily, along the way, the “boisterous, obnoxious fat guy” could have been the devil boss or the evil client and who knows how it could have changed the future?

A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.