Former Senator Juan Ponce Enrile is 96 years old and reportedly still up and about and lucid.
Which is to say he’s been around, like, forever and will most likely continue to live on long after we’re all gone. Even the Covid-19 virus will cower and dissolve in his presence because he has survived them all! At least that’s what these hilarious memes making the rounds on social media recently are trying to say:
Our favorites: The one where JPE threw a rock at Jesus and Jesus threw bread back at him. Truly the good old days! And the other where he recounts crossing land bridges to China, because there weren’t cars then. Laugh trip!
But on a more serious note, Juan Ponce Enrile really had lived through horrible times, namely, WWII. In his autobiography Juan Ponce Enrile: A Memoir, he recounts the harrowing experience of being imprisoned by the Kempeitai (the military police arm of the Imperial Japanese Army) for almost 100 days, surviving extreme hunger, disease, and torture. Knowing the hell that our grandfathers went through during the Second World War, that meme about how easy it should be for us to cooperate in this pandemic because our elders were called to war and we are asked to sit on our couches and watch Netflix begins to make sense.
Another serious note: the ones who are most vulnerable in this pandemic are the elderly. We should do our best to care for them and shield them from infection. We can do this. If Manong Johnny survives, then truly there must be hope!