Chiq Boutique

Resurrecting Chiq Boutique

I used to sell stickers and small toys to my younger siblings when I was thirteen to fourteen years old. My wares were carried around in a small yellow kiddie purse that was shaped like a toothpaste tube. It had pictures of Donald Duck on it. I called my store – Chiq Boutique.Napa-uso yong larong tinda-tinda sa aming magkakapatid.

There were five kids in our household, but only four of us were into the selling craze. Our eldest, a full-fledged teenager, was detached from us all. She was forever daydreaming about her boyfriend, writing in her diary, reading Sweet Dreams Romance, and listening to Air Supply. I was second in line and resisting the idea of puberty with every fiber of my being.

My younger sister was selling her services as a portrait artist. She’d pretend to take pictures of us and our dolls. Then she would draw it and frame it using cardboard and felt paper. Her business was called – Dreamer’s Crafts.

Not to be outdone, my one and only brother, who was seven years old, put up his own. He named it – Loglog Shop. On Sundays he would go to the market to buy Tagalog komiks, which he would rent out to us for 25 or 50 cents.

Our youngest was three years old. She didn’t know anything about competition so she was only a customer. Neither did she know anything about money nor did she have any allowance, so we just gave her our stuff for free.

Few years later I lost interest in selling my usual wares, but I had compiled a bunch of small brown notebooks that served as my journal. Needing cash, I decided to rent out my journals (to my siblings of course). I thought it would be a lucrative venture since one thing we all enjoyed doing was going through our eldest sister’s closet for her diaries. Charging one peso to read a page and five pesos to read a whole notebook (a real bargain for something so private), there were no takers. Even if I left my journals lying around in our bedroom, nobody read them. I know because nobody taunted me by reciting their contents out loud. That’s one thing we liked to do when we wanted to torment our eldest sister.

Looking back now, I understand why my venture didn’t click. Nobody wanted to read my journals because I had no boyfriend when I wrote them. My siblings probably thought they were not juicy enough to read.That was more than twenty years ago.

I have reached my middle adulthood stage. I’m still scribbling my random thoughts on pieces of paper that get tucked away in piles of books and bills. This online journal is an attempt to put them all together and see if the puzzle pieces of my life fit well enough to form a picture that is pleasing to myself and others. So I’m resurrecting Chiq Boutique from the dusty recesses of my memory box. Here’s hoping that life has given me a richer material to draw from so that this time, when I peddle the contents of my head, there would finally be some takers.