XDYR Welcomes Lucy!

After nine years in the US of A, Lucy comes home for a short vacation. Naturally, all of us, her XDYR friends, are falling over ourselves in welcoming her.

XDYR—my favorite letters in the alphabet—is a group of over 200 friends who were once colleagues at DYR (the acronym of the advertising agency where choice led us all) in various eras.

The X means, well, ex—past, gone, yesterday. But this particular X is sort of indestructible; it has been fortified with grace, which has welded all the X's together in mysterious ways.

We see each other rarely—once in a blue moon, in fact—but we are drawn together on Facebook and an e-mail e-group. And somehow, the bond has been like Portland cement after all of nine years since the ad agency became extinct, splitting into two distinctly different joints—one named after D, and the other, after YR.

When Lucy emails she is coming home, cyburbia gets manic. What an excuse to have an eye-ball after a, uh, millennium. In record time, someone or some-two or some-three organize three get-togethers, one of which is at Boy P’s summer palace in Tagaytay on a Saturday.

We trek to the hills and our path is directed by signs like this.


Boy P, one of the world's greatest hosts in my book, took no chances. Some of us had been to his grand villa-retreat-getaway-hotelish-resort mansion before, but we are always on the verge of getting lost. As soon as we get there, the gluey potion that is labeled XDYR gives everyone a high.  

Pandemonium and melee ensue when Lucy arrives. The many years that separated us all go. . . pooof! Sure, torsos now have paunches, mops of hair are gray, faces are lined, arms sport flabs, and figures are, well, disfigured, but everyone's spirit has remained unchanged.

Then Lucy belts out, “Why, we all look better now than we did before!”

These photos show that for once, our dearest friend Lucy—queen of hyperbole—speaks the naked truth.

Photo credits: Ronald, Tom, and . . . sorry, due to failing memory I can't remember.