Jack

Years before the office I worked in was reconstructed, the employees' smoking pavilion was located on the west side of the compound where everyone could see it. Sometimes the officers' dependents came and joined us there. One of them was 15-year-old Jack. Everyone thought him obnoxious because he was loud and garrulous and liked telling tall tales about himself. For example, that he belonged to a famous dojo where he became skilled at martial arts--one of the employees actually investigated and discovered that he was unheard of there. And that he rubbed elbows with important people--again someone checked the names that he dropped and came up with nothing.

All through the entire time that Jack's parents were deployed in the Philippines he would come to the smoking pavilion and regale us with his tales. When he disappeared for a while, we assumed that he was in school. He reappeared before his parents were transferred to another post. Of course, he resumed telling us wild stories about himself again. That, during a flood, the car that he and his friends were using were submerged in water outside the bar they spent a whole night in. That he got arrested for being drunk and spent a night in a city jail until his father came to pick him up. That he was being recruited as a fashion model, and that he was being scheduled for a photo shoot, for which he was going to be paid a huge amount. That he traveled to a lot more places in the Philippines than we ever did.

Everyone was relieved when Jack's family moved to another country, because Jack finally stopped coming. He was conveniently forgotten by my co-workers but, being a writer, I did not forget him and the stories he told us.

And then, two months later, a friend showed me a Boardwalk catalog and asked me if I were interested in buying anything. Sure enough, Jack was one of the models in the section for teen wear. During this time I also actually saw a billboard on EDSA with his blow-up on it.

I realized that many of the later stories Jack told us were true. It was a shame that his first tall tales about himself didn't hold up.

I now wonder what he had to go through to land that stint as a model and be taken to places around the country.