Inside Billiards

Pool halls, internet cafes combined with pool halls, bars/pool halls, and well, more pool hall. That is all you might see everywhere you might turn today.

POOL TUTOR. Mr. Roy Pacaco, PEHM teacher, shows school accountant Ronald Cruz to play the ball and stick.

Also, if you look even closer, you won't be seeing many people outdoors. You'd most likely now find them inside… well, pool halls.

Even televisions are infested with billiard tournament and shows, and shows featuring "Magicians" and "Pearls." Maybe televisions are not exactly infested with these kinds of shows, but when you see how men and women alike towards them everytime a program even remotely related to billiards, you'd think they were!

Indeed, our country seems to have been plagued with this disease that has infected the elite and the people below poverty line both. Billiards has now become so popular that it might as well be our national sport! …And what if it was?

If billiards did become the Philippines' national sport, some of these things are surely to happen:

1. The acronym "PBA" won't be anymore known as the Philippine Basketball Association but - guess.
2. The DECS will be forced to put billiards side by side with chess and volleyball in the Palarong Pambansa.
3. We will be criticized by the ____, the people who created billiards.
4. We would start winning all pool championships around the world.
5. To live up to our new reputation, the DECS will be forced to grant sport scholarships for billiards.
6. The crime rate in schools will rapidly increase as punks with talents for sinking balls at side pockets and sinking wallets in their own pockets swarm campuses.
7. We will have our own TV channels devoted to billiards that feature shows like "Shoot Like a Pro: Bring Out The Filipino in You."
8. The _____s will get angrier.
9. The _____s will declare war against us; there will be external pressures and political unrest.
10. War will erupt in learning establishments everywhere in the country; there will be internal pressures and political unrest.
11. Guess.

Don't get me wrong, I do believe that pool is an important matter and a very fulfilling activity, and it would also be nice to have it as our national sport, but if it would only mean choosing between war and devastation and empty streets lined with pool halls, I think the latter would be more… appealing.