Limang-Dipang-Tao

Church traffic is just like traffic on the roads. Or is it the other way around?

When on the road, you just love to hate people who drive with uber slowness as if they're sightseeing on the humongous billboards ornamenting the whole stretch of EDSA-Guadalupe. (We should thank Milenyo that many of those boards are now gone, opening us up to a better view of the hopeful polluted Manila sky.) Also, there are those who look like they're rushing to the ER, which is still a good (or bad?) 100 miles from where they are, finding the need to counterflow and HONK!!! HONK!!! or overtake faster than the speed of light, then HONK!!! HONK!!! HONK!!!. Then at times you get so fucking relieved to finally be out of a bumper-to-bumper situation, only to realize that the joke is on you again after seeing that the traffic was just caused by either of these stupid things: a vehicle (and pray it's not a bus!!!) breaking down in the middle of the road, egotistic maniacs parking so wrongly on either side of the road, making passage one hell of a job for many or two vehicles smashing against each other (pray again neither is a bus!!!) because either of the two drivers is so fucking stupid or both of them just plainly pathetically are. You just couldn't be any happier to come across NORMAL drivers who seem to share the same sentiments about the same kinds of people, therefore, drive the way that's agreeable to you. If only you could roll down your window and say 'Thank You' to them, releasing that much needed sigh of relief.

Then, notice the different ways people go in and out of the church. They're a complete replica of the vehicular traffic in Manila. As the final song plays and people start to go out in long distorted lines of God-knows-how-many, you would encounter churchgoers of different types: from the most cooperative, walking in the same pace and direction as you do, or at least in the way they should be walking, minding that there are people behind them who are also trying to find a (good) seat; to the most annoying, walking like they're on a procession or flores de mayo, not mindful of the people behind them and thinking that walking a tad faster would ruin their gowns worth not much, hair of 10 layers of gel and make-up courtesy of Viveka Vavaji's Beauty Parlor. There are also those who habitually turn the patio into the chismis nook of their sleazy barkada, with the end of the mass merely the time for meeting, forgetting that they're blocking the way of many more worthy and important people, who have a more worthy and important place to be at. The likes of these people are the ones causing the ridiculously heavy traffic on the road.

And they make going to the church as unlikeable as it is to drive along EDSA... ANYTIME.