Babysitting a Celebrity
She will always be Aggie to me. It is, after all, closer to her given name, Agnes. It sounds sweet and rolls off my tongue easily. Though she is “Nanette” to her family and fans—a pet name carried over to UP Prep from home and later to stage and screen—I insist on Aggie because it is a proprietary term of endearment for a friend who means the world to me. Looking back, those early high school moments were more than just fond memories; they were early glimpses of the star she would become. Even back then, this girl born with impeccable timing and a dazzling, heartwarming smile possessed the rare magic to touch both the heart and the funny bone.
This Ilang-ilang classmate in her blue uniform skirt that hangs just below her knees was sashaying towards us. She had a glint of mischief in her eyes. With one hand on her hip and one finger of the other wagging, she was seductively mouthing words we could not understand because they sounded Frenchy. But the visual imagery was clear to us. She was mimicking a femme fatale from the films and was doing it successfully, too. That always elicited laughter from all of us.
Standing taller than most of us with her baby fat still very much evident, her fair complexion was the envy of us all for its whiteness and smoothness. The boys regaled us with tales of how they used to throw admiring glances up her skirt as she climbed the broad staircase to our classroom on the 3rd floor. Unable to resist a smutty double entendre, Aggie would counter by revealing to wearing panties with holes in them to make the boys' ogling a little more interesting. Her sense of humor endeared her to our boys who treated her as one of their own.
But not when it came to singing which the boys regarded as their exclusive domain. When the boys gathered during class breaks to harmonize the latest pop tunes with an acoustic guitar, girls, including Agnes, would cluster around them. However, while most girls merely swooned over boys who had the voice and the skills to make music, Aggie could musically relate because she could sing, too. There was a time when she thought nothing of singing the second voice to a refrain of a song. To her chagrin, she was stopped mid-stride by one of the boys who said the song did not need a second voice, and would she please stop singing? She was hurt deeply as she recalls now because one other thing that Aggie is naturally gifted with is vocal harmony honed by her growing up in a church setting, hearing and singing hymns since she was young. Humiliated, she remembers muttering under her breath: “I will show you.”
And show us, she did. Many years later, I supervised a musical event at the atrium of Casa Manila where I was Museum Curator and Aggie as “Nanette,” a guest performer. By then she was on her way to stardom as a vocal artist and a comedic actor but being a classmate in high school, I felt emboldened to greet her. Although friendly, I could sense in her reaction that she hardly remembered me. Being a celebrity crowded memories of her childhood and pushed them far back in her mind. If not for the reunions that she began attending first, as a paid professional entertainer then simply as one of us who longed for the good old days, she would have totally forgotten most of her high school classmates and adolescent exploits like when one classmate tried to “drown” her in swim class.
“Manlulunod!” she screamed, her accusing finger pointed at Elizabeth Suba-Diaz, a star swimmer in our PE swim class in Diliman. Babes used to playfully dunk Nanette's head in the water as she struggled to learn to swim. It must have been a memorable moment in her young life for it to surface out in the open the way it did, and we all had a deep, belly laugh about it. Sitting in the lobby of the Peninsula Hotel where a few of us had gathered to reminisce, we helped Aggie clear the cobwebs off her mind and pick up right where we left off.
Over the decades, even as life took us across different oceans, that bond never faded. Today, whenever Aggie travels abroad for her shows, her Ilang-ilang and Prepian families step in as her primary support system—not just filling theater seats, but stepping up as her entourage whenever her official manager or assistants can't make the trip. That was precisely how I landed the joyful privilege of babysitting Aggie during her visit to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2016.
She had a whole day with nothing to do prior to a show, so I took her to run some errands, drive around, gossip, shop, pig out, pamper ourselves at the beauty salon and massage parlor, and watch TV at the end of the day. I am awed at how Aggie remains the same warm, kind, generous, and sensitive person I've always known her to be when interacting with her fans in public places like a Walmart Superstore. Filipino sales clerks would instantly recognize her from behind their counters and very willingly give her a kind of service only a fellow-Filipino and a fan at that, could give.
I learned that when you babysit a celebrity like I did for one whole day, it is actually easy to disappear in the background when fans corral the star for autographs and photo ops. The fans will simply crowd you out and shove you away from your ward. Moreover, when Aggie switches on her charm, even a complete stranger quickly turns into a fan. I witnessed that in action when I took her to a Taiwanese hot pot restaurant for lunch. A man from Texas in town for business was visibly confused with the bowls of food parading before him in a carousel and did not know what to do. Aggie went over to him and explained, much to his relief, how to navigate around the raw food carousel, the small counter stoves, and the sauces station. He was blown away upon learning that a famous person actually took the time to get him out of his embarrassing predicament.
Aggie's generosity is in full display when she shares her art with friends, family, and community. Her foreign tours always include pro bono performances in churches, in friends and family events, and always, in UP Prep reunions where she either emcees or performs.
For example, just a few years after reuniting with her, I invited her, along with my Ilang-ilang gang and some SF Bay Area batch mates, to my Pearl (30th) wedding anniversary. From Las Vegas, Digna Ocava-Newcomer came to stand as my matron-of-honor. From Lubbock, Texas, and Manila, Elvira Pascua-Lim and Riza Jose-Baldoria came to read bible verses at the mass and emcee the program at the reception. Aggie flew in from Manila and to our surprise, gave us a gift to keep for posterity. She performed for our guests for an hour and a half, effectively giving us a concert. Her powerful rendition of diva songs and comedy stylings with materials that she catered to a mixed crowd of Filipinos and Americans were the high points of our celebration.
Ironically, Aggie is most serious when she is working to make people laugh. She plumbs the depths of human nature and behavior, using her sharp insight to weave social bonds across an entire room. Laughter, after all, is the ultimate bridge. Whether performing before a cozy gathering of Prepian batchmates or commanding a brightly lit auditorium, her live sets sparkle with satirical observations, racy anecdotes, and hilarious, perfectly timed one-liners. She stays intimately tuned into the news, pop culture, and the everyday lives of her audience, turning shared quirks into gold.
But if I know Aggie, her true passion remains the music made with the instrument she was born with: her voice. When she steps up to a microphone, closes her eyes, and hits that first effortless note, the entire room falls silent. In those moments, she isn't singing to a crowd; she is singing directly to you. Music is her lifeblood, her spiritual offering to her public and her Creator.
Even with all her fame, Aggie remains grounded in her calling as a role model and mentor. Between her grueling schedule of stage and screen appearances, you can still find her standing at a lecture hall podium at the Wesleyan College of Manila or Philippine Christian University, gesturing passionately as she teaches Communication courses to wide-eyed students. Aggie continues to entertain and inspire while most of us have eased into retirement, once confiding in me that only sickness or death could ever stop her from fulfilling her life’s mission.
