I LOOKED at the 10 centavo-coin I had been touching covetously all morning. It could buy either a piece of cake or a hotdog. This was the early ?60s, I was in Grade 1 and had visions of biting into the sweet multi-colored icing on that small rectangular slice of cake, or sinking my teeth into the juicy meatiness of the freshly grilled hotdog with its preternatural red color.

And then the bomb dropped.

Starting today, our teacher announced in class, everyone must speak only English while inside the campus. Henceforth, every Tagalog word spoken in school shall be fined five centavos each. No exceptions, not even expressions of surprise or pain, like aray! prepositions or suffixes, such as naman, ha?, eh, and so on.

?Oh my gulay, what a disaster,? a classmate thought aloud ? and was promptly fined five centavos.

I had to watch my tongue, I thought, editing myself mentally before I so much as spoke a word to my seatmate. ?Ar? ouch!? I exclaimed when somebody stepped on my toes in the tight squeeze at the toilet door. If I had been unusually quiet in grade school, blame it on my limited arsenal of English words and my even more restricted baon. Two misspoken words and I would have to go hungry all day.

At first it was difficult, probably like living in a totalitarian state where everybody watched everyone else, cocking a suspicious ear to catch that errant Tagalog word for a chance to tell Teacher about it and get an A in conduct. As docile grade-schoolers, we were deathly afraid of rules and had yet to develop the esprit de corps that defined that easy camaraderie among adults.

As the years flew by, things got easier because we had good books and really great teachers. I particularly remember and loved the ?Voyages in English? textbook series that had poems like ?The Owl and the Pussy Cat? and ?The Little Girl Who Would Never Say Please,? that we were required to memorize and recite in class. I swear I can still recall whole chunks of those poems today.

In high school, we had the same drill under Miss Alice Buenviaje (now Wilder), and recited ?Oh Captain, My Captain? individually in front of the class. Mark Anthony?s speech extolling Caesar from Shakespeare?s ?Julius Caesar? remains a favorite, my dear friends, Romans and countrymen. I may not have the oratorical skills to dazzle listeners but I had a good memory and loved the sound of English words recited aloud.

Thus did English open another world for me. At home, where Tagalog komiks and Liwayway were my parents? favorite reading matter, the English storybooks and textbooks from school provided a good counterpoint, sharpening my appetite for reading and my fascination with English words.

Fortunately, ICAM (Immaculate Concepcion Academy of Manila) had (and hopefully, still has) a good library where books of all types and persuasions beckoned behind glass shelves, the early guiding hand to this group of grade-schoolers that ICAM teachers brought in regularly for their library hour. As soon as I got my library card ? I think I was in Grade Two or Three then ? I became a frequent visitor, devouring storybooks that my parents didn?t really have the extra budget for. I remember how some classmates would snicker at how the librarian at that time was always pregnant (?Nagtitipid sa Kotex,? a classmate, the daughter of a doctor, giggled), but for me, she was among the best librarians I?ve ever met. She let me be. She never looked over my shoulder to censor what I was reading nor did she reprimand me because I had become almost a permanent fixture in the library.

Thus, while I cringed with fear as I met Zuma and Darna?s nemesis, the Taong Tuod at home, I stared dreamy-eyed at the Shah Reza Pahlavi of Iran in this coffee table book about his wedding to the fabulous Farah Diva, many, many years before he was overthrown by the Ayatollah Khomeini. It was also in ICAM?s library that I got so enamored with Pollyanna that I finished the entire series of 12 books featuring this overly-optimistic heroine ? fortuitous, it turns out, when I had to confront some dark episodes in my life.

My secret love affair with the nuns? English and ICAM?s library (for which I willingly took the schoolbus? last trip just so I could stay at the library until it closed at 5 p.m.) nurtured my love for books, and my dream of someday writing one myself.

And so I strove to sound like my favorite writers in English, studying doubly hard for my reading as well as language and spelling subjects, especially theme writing. It helped that I had supportive teachers: Miss Teresita Lacson in Grade 4, who regularly passed on my stuff to the school paper, and Miss Buenviaje and Miss Violeta Aquino in high school, who firmly took me in hand and led me to the editorship of L? Etincelle. For two years, I wrote for and edited the schoolpaper and decided it was a job I wouldn?t mind doing the rest of my life. So I took up Journalism in college despite my father?s importuning that I take up Commerce instead.

The ferment of the early ?70s, and later, the protest movement post-Ninoy's assassination in ?83, put English in disfavor. Suddenly, even colegialas were speaking Tagalog, never mind that it sounded affected and contrived. But Tagalog became a symbol of protest, the lingua franca of emerging activism that had been repressed during the Martial Law days.

Many times I wish I could write as fluidly in Tagalog even as I can comfortably speak it. But it?s in English where I can more easily find the right words to express myself, English that allows me some measure of success in writing, and English with which I travel ?unafraid ? to any part of the world. No apologies, that?s just the way it is. And for better or worse, my journey began in that antiquated rule in ICAM. Thank you, MIC Sisters! ?

This essay appears in L?Amitie, the alumni newsletter of the Immaculate Concepcion Academy of Manila. ICAM holds its Grand Alumni Homecoming on Saturday, Feb. 6, at the school grounds on 2212 S. Del Rosario St., Gagalangin, Tondo, Manila. Hosted by Batch ?85, the homecoming has a 12:30 p.m. registration and starts with a Mass at 2 p.m. The alumni program is at 4. For details, call Ruth at 0917-6286648; Tess at 0929-5157710, or Ester at 0917-7934541.