My first window to the world was literally my neighbor’s window

I also witnessed the real-life drama of the family inside while watching the dramas on television.

I did not see live television until I was 10 years old.

Growing up in Samar, we didn’t have a TV. My childhood entertainment came from komiks and Betamax. Sometimes TV shows like “Lovingly Yours, Helen” or Maricel Soriano dramas reached us on tapes, played like movies in tiny neighborhood cinemas with a television and Betamax player. To me, television wasn’t something that happened live. It came inside a cassette.

Then we moved to Manila in 1988.

I was amazed that you could turn on a television and something was simply there. And it was free! At my grandmother’s house, we had an old black-and-white cabinet TV. I watched everything—“Eat Bulaga!,” “Student Canteen,” “Valiente,” “Agila,” cartoons, whatever was on.

Then I discovered that the family renting the small extension downstairs had a big color TV.

For a 10-year-old who had barely known television at all, seeing TV in color felt almost miraculous.

Their television was visible from an open window. So every afternoon after morning classes, I would run home, eat lunch and position myself there.

I became a TV addict at that window.

I watched “Eye to Eye,” “That’s Entertainment,” “She-Ra,” “ThunderCats,” “Visionaries” and practically anything they would let me watch. They were so generous that sometimes they even allowed me to choose the channel. I discovered “National Geographic” there, too, and became fascinated by a world much larger than the one I knew.

Looking back, I realize how intrusive I must have been. It was their home, after all. And while watching the dramas on television, I also witnessed the real-life drama of the family inside.

They had three boys. The older ones had their own struggles. One had epilepsy, and occasionally he would have a seizure while I was standing there. As a child, it terrified me. One moment I was watching some colorful fantasy on TV; the next, real life was unfolding only a few feet away.

Still, they never drove me away.

And I wasn’t the only child at that window.

Sometimes five or seven of us would squeeze together outside, especially when cartoons were showing. We would peer over shoulders and between heads just to see the screen.

That window remained part of my childhood even when I reached high school. Our television upstairs was still black and white. Theirs was still bigger, brighter and infinitely more exciting.

One of the last things I remember watching there was “Miss Universe 1994,” shortly before I left for college.

Today, almost everything I once waited to watch through somebody else’s window is available instantly on the phone in my hand.

Yet I wonder if we lost something along the way.

When televisions were expensive, a TV could somehow belong to an entire neighborhood. Someone’s living room became our cinema. An open window became our front-row seat. We watched together because there was only one screen to watch.

Now we can have five people sitting beside each other, each staring at a different phone.

We have more screens than ever, but we watch alone.

When I think about that childhood now, I don’t remember the brand of my neighbor’s television. I remember the open window. I remember the children crowded around me.

Most of all, I remember a family who could have easily closed that window but never did.

They probably thought they were just letting a poor kid watch television.

I now realize they were giving me a window to the world.

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