The Music Played

Aling Mary, An Urban Legend (03-25-07)
by Audrey De Castro on Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 11:33am

I just got rid of my stupid ring back tone, Boom Tarat Tarat, last week. I had to call Globe to know how to do it. Now I know why my load decreases for no good reason every now and then, it was because of that annoying ring back crap. It was my sister’s doing, she received that message from 2331 saying that those ring back tunes can be downloaded for free and so anything with the word FREE seemed appealing to us. I don’t know why we chose to download Boom Tarat Tarat amongst all the other less crappy tunes, maybe the whole idea is to be dumbest when the situation asks it.

Novelty songs just keep on coming, don’t they? I thought the horror ended when the Sex Bomb Girls left Eat Bulaga but no, they just kept on swarming everywhere. I guess the life span of such songs don’t rely on who’s doing the dimwitted choreography. Somebody kill Lito Camo… puhleassse…

I remember this anecdote by my brother’s friend, Bato (no, he’s not into drugs), about his mother who seemed to be so attached to that Boom Tarat Tarat jingle. Only she has her own version. It goes like PUNG! TARARARARAT! PUNG! TARARARARAT! TARARARARAT! TARARARARAT! PUNG! PUNG! PUNG! I see the deal with those dump songs is that they register in your head, but not completely. Like there was this one time when I was unconsciously singing a Sponge Cola song and I was like, “Wag kang bibitiw, bakla. Wag kang bibitiw, bakla…” and I realized that the song doesn’t really go that way. The Curse of the Subconscious. Even if you hate a certain song with all your soul and being, there’s this anomalous way of you tending to get them absorbed even faster than the songs that you like.

So back to Bato’s mother, Aling Mary, she probably watches Wowowee every single goddamned day of her adult life that the jingle comes out of her mouth as normal as her breathing does. Bato said that no matter what his mother is doing she’s always either humming or singing that song out loud. She came with her own ring back tone. Like when she’s doing the dishes, “Pung! Tararararat!”, feeding the love birds, “Pung! Tararararat!”, or just calling their dog, “Spaaarkyyy! Pung! Tararararat!” It was alarming, reckons Bato. I think he’s actually glad that he no longer has a father, because they all sleep in the same room and times could get horny.

Then one night, my sister and I were watching Supernatural on Studio 23, a series about two brothers fighting evil in all its form and weirdness, and the “enemy” that the characters needed to battle in that episode was Bloody Mary. Urban Legend has it that if you say her name three times in front of a mirror, she would come out of that mirror and scratch your eyes off. I haven’t really tried it because I’m so much of a chickenshit. And I turned to my sister, who also knows about Aling Mary’s Wowowee jingle fixation, and thought instead of saying Bloody Mary why don’t we try saying Aling Mary’s name for three times in front of the mirror.

My sister cringed, “Ayoko nga baka patayin nya tayo kakakanta nya ng Pung Tararararat.”
And I thought, “Hell yeh, that is practically scarier than getting your eyes ripped off.”

Anyway, there’s no point to this story, I just wanted to share. He-he.