Friday, April 08, 2005

Filipino Folklore

Its time for another "Getting Real with Rowela" or "Rowela's Rants" or "Ro's Ridiculously Rad Report." Whatever you call it, she's gonna inform us today about some popular filipino childrens' stories that I found SO entertaining I said she had to share them with the world... or at least the 5 people who read this. Without Further Adu... ROWELA!!!!

*** Crowd Cheers ***

These are stories that Filipino parent's like to tell their kids to explain why we look the way we look. My mom told me these stories when I was younger and it made me kind of proud to be Filipino. Now however... they kind of make me laugh.

Here's one.

God was in the kitchen in heaven and he was making man to place on the Earth. After forming them he placed them in the oven to bake them. When they were done baking he opened up the oven. But these people were burnt and God put them aside. Again he placed people in the oven. When he removed them he discovered that they were not baked all the way through and he set these aside too. Again he put another batch of people in the oven. This time when he opened the oven door and found that they were baked just right. Beautiful and golden brown. These people were the Filipinos.

And a second one....

All of the people were waiting in line in heaven to get their noses. The noses were placed in a large bowl on a very high table. All of the tall white people were able to get the very best noses, that were long, straight and had perfectly shaped bridges. The Filipinos could not reach the high bowl and we were left with the noses that had fallen from the bowl and had been trampled. And so our noses are round and flat and missing the bridge.

So... I feel bad about the first one because of the blatant racism. And the second one just kind of makes me sad that I got the crappy nose that no one wanted and to top it all off, it got stepped on.
I invite you all to share the sad stories your parents told you when you were little... or feel free to laugh at mine.

4 comments:

Scott said...

Both were great examples of the strange stories parents tell children to explain things to them. Just tell me the truth damn it! Better than confusing me for the next few years. The funny thing is that my parents told me a story pretty much the same as the first one. I always wondered why God only half baked me and why the Filipino's got the awesome skin tones. Seriously, it's not like I was burnt, just give me 5 more minutes in there. But it was too late.

- Scott

Anonymous said...

Great stuff there!

When I was little and wanted to know why there were white people and black people, a school teacher told me the sun fell on Africa. It was some Greek mythology thing...Apollo (the sun god) allowed his son to drive the chariot and he screwed up and the sun fell on Africa or something like that! How's that for racist!

Rob, sorry I haven't posted in awhile, I've been having problems with your webiste, my computer has been slow and it won't let me do a lot of things!

Tabitha

Timmy Tapeworm said...

This isn't so much an instance of my parents telling a story, but I think it applies. Every so often when we were kids, Dad would call Josh and I to the kitchen table. In front of him was a potato and about 15 toothpicks. Without saying a word, he slowly began to stick the toothpicks into the potato. But not randomly - he did it in such a way as to create a little potato dog that could stand up on its own.

He never really explained why. We just always assumed it was some kind of roundabout threat.

The Melan'jack said...

My parents had a picture taken of themselves in poineer clothes at one of those carnival booths. As an innocent and trusting youth, I would ask them who those people were and they would tell me all about great great grandpappy Jebidiah and his wife, Crazy Ethel. Each time I asked, I got a brand new story chock full of LIES and DECEIT! It wasn't until I saw Bill and Ted's excellent adventure--when Abraham Lincoln got his picture taken and the dude tried to steal his hat--that I realized the people in the picture WERE MY PARENTS.

They also tried to convince me that I was half-Canadian because the hospital I was born in in North Dakota was half-way to Canada.

Oh and that I had an extra Christmas because I was born in December.

Lying... bastards.