My Blog

a korean friend once told me that i have such an unusually small mouth for my face.  i don’t know if she meant it as a compliment or an insult, but i have a strong suspicion that it’s the latter.  looking back, i swear she gave a sardonic laughter after she said it, but then again i could be imagining this.  anyway, after she told me this, i took a moment to study myself in the mirror–a habit i can shamelessly say i’ve acquired since God knows when–and confirmed that indeed i have very thin lips.  this doesn’t bother me though because i know that even if i had mick jagger’s or steve tyler’s famous pout, my life wouldn’t change a bit.

a famous person once said, "the pen is mightier than the sword."  well, in my case, my mouth–as small as it is–has been my greatest weapon.  i would have been an easy target for bullies in elementary and high school, but because i knew how to talk my way out to almost any situation, thankfully  i avoided being the punching bag of these horrible entities.  sometimes i get amazed at the capacity of my mouth: there are times when i am convinced that it has a brain of its own.  it can lash out bad words as easily as it can sweet talk.

albeit, i can consider my mouth an asset, there were also times when it got me into trouble.  in high school, i slighted somebody i barely know because my mouth was too quick in describing the new transferee to our school as someone "who doesn’t look smart."  obviously, i said this without thinking, and many thought i was being unfair.   having realized my blunder, i risked being beaten black and blue by apologizing to the person.  i wonder how i did it, but what i said to him must have been impressive because despite the fact that i lashed out on him behind his back, he still voted for me in the student organization elections.  in another instance and this just happened recently, i unknowingly humiliated a colleague and friend by something i said.  worst part is, i didn’t know anything about it until our mutual friend told me about it.  sometimes, i beat kris aquino in being tactless.  kris seemed to have mellowed a lot, a feat i wish to emulate.

you see, my relatively small mouth doesn’t need to pucker up a lot to make it look like it has an attitude.  to paraphrase a line from the movie, spiderman, my mouth is my blessing and my curse.