Oh, Marieton Pacheco!!
by Adam David

Note: Marieton Pacheco is a TV-news reporter for ABS-CBN Channel Two and its sister companies. She started out as a news correspondent, but then gained a wider audience during the "Jose Velarde is Joseph Estrada" trial where she was "Christine-On-The-Scene", her finger on the pulse, covering most of the trial proceedings for the ABS-CBN News Channel.

On a trip to Joseph Estrada's famed Boracay Mansion (whose ownership Mr Estrada refuses to acknowledge), Ms Pacheco tripped over a carpet and found a stamp-tag on its underside, where Mr Estrada's full and true name was written right after the words "Made For...". The prosecutors gave each other high-fives.

Ms Pacheco has this look about her face as if she woke up just ten minutes ago, which most viewers find immensely cute. She is in her early twenties, wears her hair short, and is a bit cross-eyed, which adds volumes to her cuteness even more.

She can be seen every weekday on Channel Twenty-three's early morning show Breakfast!!, which starts at 0630 and ends at 0800.

1. Marieton Pacheco and I are neighbours in Kamias, and I bump into her occasionally in the most public places. The most recent one was in the Kamias Lavandera Ko branch, the one beside the video rental place in the Korean building. I was lugging my laundry in a large black plastic bag that people normally use for bringing-out garbage. My laundry's at least two weeks old, and must've been six kilos heavy, possibly eight, even. The bag was heavy and too big for me to look over. I couldn't see Marieton so I bumped into her and her basket of undies.

The laundry attendants were giggling like catholic schoolgirls when I dropped my bag and helped Marieton pick up her undies from the floor. Apparently, she just walked in before I did, about to hand her basket of undies to one of the attendants, when I bumped into her from nowhere and spilled her undies on the floor by accident. All this I figured from the unwashed-look that her undies had. They were still rolled-around and curled-up along the sides, like she had just used them four hours ago, still looking like they did the last time she tossed them into the basket.

"Ay!" Marieton cried out softly from over my bag of laundry. Her voice had a girl-next-door quality to it. The last time I heard that sort of voice was way back in high school, from a girl who had the same last name as I do. I've forgotten what her first name was, but I remember her last name like I do mine. Marieton's voice had that quality, so instantly, I felt homey beside her.

"Sorry," I said. I was really, genuinely sorry. I laid my laundry bag beside me, all of six-to-eight kilos of it, and crouched down to help her pick up her undies. "Sorry. It was an accident. I couldn't see over my bag of laundry, and I didn't know you were there by the door. Sorry."

"No, it's okay, I was in the way" she said. She was wearing her yellow Chuck Taylor's and blue jeans and an old school white PE shirt that had blue piping. She smelled slightly of old nylon and sweat and strawberries. "Amoy chicks!!" my friend Adrian would've exclaimed. If it was possible, I felt homier and homier beside her. I wanted to take her home and introduce her to my friends and parents.

"I'll help you," I told her. I felt like a Boy Scout, a gallant knight, like those guys in scented-sanitary-napkins commercials.

We were crouched around her basket, picking-up and sorting-out her undies from the floor when I realised it was Marieton's undies in my hands. Along the inner side of one pair's garter, I read her name written with red pentel pen, with a small heart to dot the "i": Marieton. (next episode)