Danton Remoto Remote Control Views and analysis www.abs-cbnnews.com Thirty years ago I joined an essay-writing contest for Quezon City high-school students and won for this piece, written when I was 14 years old. I recently unearthed this while fixing my files. Let us see if times have changed for the bagets nowadays. * * * It has been said that a mother’s hands shape the world. From cradle to college and even long afterward, a mother nags, laughs, cries and goads you to be not just what you are but what you can be. “Your mother belongs to the old school,” my father will say when we are baffled by her actions. She barks orders like a platoon sergeant, telling us children to fold our blankets, flatten our bed sheets and not to leave our dirty clothes on the floor like molten snake’s skin. She also orders us to arrange our books, dust the windows, and sweep the leaves in the yard now that the maid has gone back to her hometown to join the fiesta and the baile (dance). My mother is a worr...