Ready for Red Days
By: Maria Reylan M. Garcia
I could not recall how my already trembling little feet minced its way to the college's comfort room and dragged me unto doing laundry on a Thursday afternoon. Yes, I was doing laundry while the rest of my kind was rejoicing for relief on the last post test of the semester. My body was looped into a twist since I was rubbing the stain off from the backside of my currently worn white pencil-cut skirt. The stain wasn't a question of my inherent clumsiness in fish sauce spills or ketchup splatters, but it did seem to appear like either of the two. Rather, the annoying foul smelling bloody stain marked not only my second day of menstruation that month but also my intrinsic nature of being unprepared. My mother always reminded me to have an extra skirt in my bag if I were in my blushing red days. But it seemed to have always escaped my mind. Thus, on that Thursday afternoon my white pencil-cut skirt was some inches away from resembling a Japanese flag.
Being ready and prepared, these are some attitudes many have failed to set into a habit. I am not certain if it's the rush of hormones and heart pounding anxiety that lured us into the usual cramming and last minute resolutions. Several others remained glued to their belief of time pressure to be a successful stimulus to creative ideas, wise decisions, and enhanced memory. Students these days would work on their projects previously given some months ago just the night before the deadline. Last minute shoppers would flood the groceries and department stores pushing their heavily loaded carts a day before either Christmas or New Year's Eve. The birth of rush i.d and passport sized pictures that catered to seemingly ill-equipped job applicants. It is as if launching a military war without any training or ammunitions, without neither cannon nor some grenades to spare.
Yet, I remain cemented on my foothold that quality weighs more than quantity. Take the millions of Chinese produced milk that were refused by most importing nations due to its harmful reactions to the body. Profit was indeed the mindset, that none of the manufacturers prepared for the consequences of adding in melamine, a crystalline solid compound used in making plastics. Quality is defined by the lengthy planning and a prepared state of mind to carry on with fabricating long-lasting health safe products and receiving the much coveted 1.0s on a semester's project. Two students both who are about to take a twenty-item quiz; one decided to study several days before the quiz and the other resulted to cramming some hours before. Although the unprepared might miraculously have a higher grade than the prepared, slim would be the chances. In the end, the prepared would retain some day's worth of study for a long time until the final exams. In most cases the unprepared would have all those information fluttering out of his retention right after he answered number 20.
The worst of all scenarios is the uncanny ability of some to swallow their guts and ask for an extension from the deadline. It was called a deadline for a reason. Some might overestimate their abilities of working well in a short span of time before the target date, and soon would realize that time is ticking and no one has yet invented a time machine. The essence of preparation comes in when everything else wouldn't fall into place and wouldn't lay out as one wish. For an unprepared lad he'll eventually raise that white flag in surrender, yet for a ready time gratifying lass, she'll eventually pull out her Plan Bs, Cs and Ds. It really pays to be ready and be prepared ahead of time, although rare others might have been gifted with speed and accuracy to meet tomorrow's, everything else will pay off if done slowly but surely.
At long last, the stained turned into what appears to be a light shade of dust that reasoned out an accidental sitting on a filth covered bench. I hastily went back to our classroom with an unnoticeable soaking white pencil-cut skirt, bearing in mind to follow a mother's reminder of an extra white skirt during those reddened days.
Be Prepared.
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