Manang Ai-ai. She was our cousin who stayed at home during one of her summer vacations and she used the simplest but traumatic way of keeping us inside the house. She would just say that something's waiting for us outside the door: either the ido buang (rabid dog) or worst x10 , Maria Labo.
From that moment on, every time we go outside and play, we would just suddenly think of ways on how to escape from a rabid dog. It's either that we run very fast or climb up a tree.
Believe me, I grew out of the Maria Labo thing but never of the rabid dog. Up until in high school I would just suddenly practice climbing short jackfruit trees in case an ido buang suddenly shows up. I got over it afterwards, when I proved to myself that rabid dogs are actually scared of water.
Manang Ai-ai's The classic... "Na hala, sige, ara da si ano sa guwa ay..."[note: Maria Labo, for the Visayan people, was a fictional (?) character made popular by various invalid firsthand testimonies over the radio. She was said to be an aswang who ate her own children leading her husband into cutting her across the face with a binangon (tagalog bolo). She had been arrested and was put into prison but was released moments later after disguising herself as a child and in some accounts, she escaped by transforming into a lizard. She was said to roam around the Visayas and Mindanao area looking for potential victims especially children lurking outside late in the day. AND in our case, children refusing to take a nap in the afternoon.]
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END OF PART 1. All part 1 posts created on Nov. 12, 2011
