The Beatles’ help

Health authorities have expressed their concern for senior citizens, like me, to be being most vulnerable to COVID-19. Their advice is for us to stay home and, if possible, keep out of contact from people. To achieve effective isolation, we are told to impose upon ourselves this thing called “self-quarantine”.

It is not easy to heed this particular call of virtual isolation for some of us who have to pursue our calling outside of our homes but since this is important and necessary to flatten the so-called curve of this worldwide crisis, I and my family have chosen to conform to this new normal. We have not gone out of our gate for almost a month now except one daughter, Atty Charisse, who is in government service. Still, she is under strict rule of obedience to health protocols. In my case and to while my time, I have found time to attend to two things, clean the garage and listen to my old long-playing records.

 Empty plastic containers and tin cans of car care products, junk tires, old newspapers and magazines. These are among the garbage i gathered from the garage. I placed these in sacks ready for eventual disposal in a portion of my small farm lot in a mountain barangay which I do every Saturday. But I have not gone out of home for three Saturdays now.

Inside my home, I have cleaned old vinyl records and listened to these a number of days in the last three weeks. My priority targets are those discs that I have not heard all these years. Among the jackets that I took from my files and played on my 1981 Pioneer turntable was an LP of The Beatles entitled Twenty Greatest Hits which the group recorded in 1982. I like to believe that music lovers are familiar with the following line: “Help me if you can, I'm feeling down. And I do appreciate you being 'round. Help me get my feet back on the ground. Won't you please, please Help me”. Yes it comes from the song Help.

 Help is what I need from either our Barangay Kasambagan Captain Franklin Ong or Cebu City Mayor Edgardo Labella. Since Tomas Osmena became our mayor in 2016, no garbage men from either the barangay or the city have come to my place. I wrote in this column sometime ago the failure of government to deliver this basic service. In fact, in two occasions, the first being a meeting Chairman Ong had with the officers and members of our village association and the second was in a public hearing at the city council, I aired my personal sentiment. I have religiously and promptly paid my share of taxes that should include the fees for the garbage collection service yet no collector gets my garbage.

Since government has failed to deliver the kind of service I have paid for, (emphasis mine) I have personally disposed of my garbage every Saturday. Self-help style. But, COVID-19 has stopped me. Because the quarantine measures that the government has imposed prevents me from bringing my trash to my mountain property, I am stuck. Then, the song of The Beatles, Help, that I played, is so relevant that I feel intercalating words of my own to the original lyrics. Help me Mayor Labella and Chairman Ong if you can, I'm feeling down. There is solid waste in my home. If you cannot get your garbage men to collect my trash, please just return to me the fees that I paid.