The numbered life. How much?
Do you notice how suddenly, every business venture or every company is pushing numbers in billions? I haven’t even licked counting in millions and everything is three digits more?
There was a time when P200,000 would have guaranteed you a comfortable retirement, complete with the trappings of the world at your fingertips. You can buy a fully loaded mobile home and just drive from north to south, stopping along the way to rest, eat, and sleep before being on the road again. You can also afford your own house and lot with nary a care in the world because you have amassed enough wealth to spend or leave behind; your choice. My children laughed at this figure that was considered mind-boggling in my generation but practically worthless, amounting to nothing today. Was it only yesterday when:
• Five centavos could buy a root beer soda? The only local brand Cosmos Sarsaparilla came in glass bottles and was best gulped down in sub-zero temperature. It froze my brain but hey! What a kick in the head it was.
• 10 centavos paid for a ride on a flashy, rainbow-painted jeepney festooned with plastic fiesta buntings with a tiny figure of Sto. Niño on the dashboard. Passengers never worried about being fleeced or robbed on board because pickpockets were unheard of then.
• Two pieces of boiled saging na saba cost 20 centavos while a kilo of freshly roasted chestnuts from Hen Wah Hopia and Grocery in Avenida Rizal was P3.50.
• 75 centavos got you a heaping double-decker chicken sandwich from Little Quiapo. If you added 25 centavos more, you had a tall glass of halo-halo with extra toppings of macapuno, ube, kaong and leche flan.
• Movie tickets cost P1.20 for orchestra and P1.80 for balcony. If you paid P3.20 for loge seats (not lodge), you were already considered from the upper crust, therefore rich.
• A set menu for a formal debut in an exclusive hotel or country club cost P3.80 per head. Hiring a choreographer to teach you the patterned steps of the cotillon would cost P75. If you booked a top combo like the Moonstrucks that played music of the Beatles, Dave Clark Five, Carl Perkins, and other rock and roll greats, they would have charged you P200.
• My classmate was nursing a broken heart when she caught her steady date with another campus belle. I took her to Rustan’s in San Marcelino to boost her spirit and she got an original Christian Dior peasant blouse in printed organza for P78.
• P50 got me a ticket to watch the Beatles live in concert at the Rizal Memorial Coliseum in the 1960s. That was my whole month’s school allowance. Today, you’d pay P3,000 for a lower box ticket. If the performer is a Grammy music awardee, who travels with his own entourage of musicians, backup singers, and lights and sound equipment, the ticket could go as high as P8,000 to P35,000 each.
• P50 in the 1970s was still a neat bundle. When I worked for an international company dealing in oil and energy, several of our field officers tucked this amount in their wallets as their emergency, feel-safe note. This amount was enough to date a girl, buy two tickets in the balcony or loge section, inclusive of movie snacks, a formal dine-in meal afterwards and extra cash to take her back home and load up on petrol, too.
• P100 meant one dozen boxes filled to the brim with imported canned goods, candies, and chocolates sold at Acme Supermarket in old Ermita. This amount made the grocery staff jump and gasp in disbelief. Very rarely did that much number of zeros appear in the cash register because in the late 1950s, foodstuff and goods, on an average monthly budget, amounted to P15 only.
• If you traveled to Hong Kong in the 1960s and shopped to death, you could own a Rolex watch for US$200 or P400. The exchange rate was US$1 = P2.
• In the late 1960s, I started as a trainee so I wasn’t paid any salary. Instead, the company gave me a gift certificate that was already considered a generous sum, P50. When I finally signed on the dotted lines, my take-home pay was P250.
• At a recent concert held at an entertainment dome, I watched a group called Tavares who composed big hits in the ’70s/’80s like Hardcore Poetry, More than a Woman (with a version by the BeeGees in Saturday Night Fever), the heyday of the disco generation. When they sang A Penny for your Thoughts, I found it archaic to think that the value set on emotions and their roller-coaster effect on young lovers amounted to a penny (or one cent), a nickel (five cents) and a dime (10 cents). They were so doggone cheap.
Inflation and devaluation give migraine and ulcers to breadwinners and homemakers in the new millennium. However, there is one facet in life that has remained untouched and undiminished: Tiny arms, taut and tight — like a rubber band — squeezing you breathless and shouting, “I love you this much, Nonna!â€
How many zeros is that?
