Saturday’s are collection days. Until recently, I almost always am in charge of collection of the Divisoria area every Saturday but now, I do it only occasionally, my brother is the one handling the task now. Today is one of those “occasional” days wherein I do the rounds instead of my brother. Like most Saturdays, nothing much happened as the task is pretty much routine except that today, I got to meet up with 2 of my previous customers by accident, i.e., I just happened to pass by their storefronts and strike up a conversation. The first “ex – customer” used to be one of my major customer about 3 – 5 years ago. Nowadays, we don’t have any transactions or deals going on as they switch to a low – priced competitor and I retaliated by selling to their most nagging competitor, which I hitherto been refraining to sell back then. Anyway, like in all business dealings, our conversations touch on the usual sales talk and personal matters. I began the conversation by offering them my products and proposing to them the terms and conditions that I am willing to offer to them. Unfortunately, they rejected it saying it wasn’t enough. Inevitably after a series of banter, our conversation drifted into talking about “old times”, when the economy is good and the mutually beneficial and profitable cooperation we had. And along the way, it then turned to their kids, which I knew personally. I was surprised or more accurately “shocked” to learn that their youngest son is just two years away from graduating from college. Dang! When we were having dealings back then, the young boy was just finishing grade school and now, he is almost through with college? Was that a long time ago? Or was time flying past me so fast that I didn’t realize it was that long ago already? Regardless, I felt so old after hearing the news. I know that I’m not young anymore but until today, I realize that I’m old already and no longer the wonder boy that I was years ago (actually it is more like more than a decade ago). I feel so old. After the chitchat, I visited another of my “old” customer, a very “old” one indeed. This second “old” customer of mine was my father’s customer and I came to know them during my stint as a sales agent for the area during my high school years. Anyway, we don’t have any dealings for something like a decade already and I was there in response to an inquiry by the “son”. When I enter the store, I was again surprised to see the “mother” or the wife of the owner during my earlier stint. She looked pretty old from the last I remembered. She gained weight, her face has more wrinkles, a few strand of white hair are also visible, and her motion is cumbersome. Actually, I shouldn’t be surprised about what I saw, for people age and they physically grow old eventually but nonetheless, the imagery stuck with me. It is not the fact that the person I knew is older than what I had pictured in my mind but rather, it is how things has changed over the years that struck me the most. When I was young and a novice, they are in their late forties to their early fifties. They looked “big” and “formidable”. They’re also confident and in “control”. To me back then, they seemed “powerful” and I was nothing but an inexperienced fumbling young man. They possessed such “power” that they could ignore me and they did ignore me at times back then. Even so, I had no choice but to go back to them. I had to. I need to. I need to make a sale. Today however, things are totally different and the roles are reversed and her physical state said it all. I was no longer the young inexperienced novice but an imperious, confident not – so – young man and she was no longer half as threatening as she was before. The balance of power has shifted. I don’t need them anymore. I could have just walk out of the door and ignore them as I did for the last 10 years. I didn’t do just that however. Ever the gentleman, I maintained my cordiality towards her. Besides, she reminds me of my mother who is just as old. I came out of the store wondering what would I be like a few years from now. Would I be like her? Maybe a couple of years later, I would be an overweight (I’m now slightly overweight) old guy slumping on a chair behind a descript desk at the back of the office and standing in front of me would be a brash, young, arrogant bastard who think he is the king of the world and is trying to pull a fast one over me. Would I be “powerless” again? Would I become “old”? Is that going to be my fate? But I never believed in fate before, not by a long shot.
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