Ranting and raving are not my thing. They sap every energy from mind, heart, and body. And yet, I dove into them last year.
It’s all about Mary Grace, the name that was being rammed down my throat by the municipal officials of the place of my birth. So I did all I could to have it changed, following the baton of my ading Dave who led the documentation of whatever is left of our parents’ properties.
End of a nightmare.
But the senior citizens’ league of our Barangay wants to see the PSA of my birth certificate if I am to receive the benefits of seasoned (euphemism for old) retirees. So I went, requested, and paid for PSA of my birth records.
Lo and behold! It’s still Mary Grace?! 
Ranting and raving came back with a vengeance. So I berate my ading Dave on our group chat. Immediately, my ading Matt reply with laughing emojis. “Read,” he and Dave command. So I read again, and sure enough at the bottom of the document are these words.
Let me repeat those words for my benefit: the child’s first name is hereby changed from “Mary Grace” to “Grace.”
I crawled under my computer chair. How can a reading advocate (“Writing has a twin,” I stress in my book talks: “Reading!) not read?!
Rubbing salt into the wound, Dave writes, “Retired proofreader.”
