THE toxic Filipino trait that is my least favorite, or should I say, I can least tolerate, is smart-shaming. This is one of the things that I think hinders most if not some, Filipinos from becoming the best versions of themselves because they would rather stay quiet or go with the flow lest they be ridiculed or, worse, bullied and ostracized. And then there are people like me, who couldn't care less about what other people say or think about my being OA or pedantic. For example, there was this time in my early 20s when I joined a Catholic church group, which was a haven for cool conyo senior high schoolers and young college people of the male and female persuasions alike, who were all really trying to find answers to their problems which I realized were not all very simple, surprisingly enough. Badly put, it was a place for young people who somehow felt that their lives were going into flames but also saw themselves as religious and thought they were just too cool to admit it. Anyway, in one of our Friday prayer meetings, which mostly consisted of a lot of socializing, we might as well have called them Friday socials, I had to say the word 'criteria' but was technically only referring to one, and so I knew I needed to use its singular form. But who says the singular form of 'criteria,' which even then, a quarter of a century ago, was already so obsolete? Well, just me, erm, I perhaps. I just couldn't get myself to say 'criteria' even when the urge was so strong. So, I said, 'There is only one criterion for choosing the next team leader.' And instantly, all of them cool conyo kids stared at me with a weirded-out look on their faces as they probably were thinking in their heads, 'Well, who is this diva?' I was eventually voted as Team Leader for the next 'weekend,' which was what we called retreats, by the way. So, I guess you can still be cool and strict with your grammar at the same time, after all.
