S1L41 – Meaning of a Simple Contract, feat. Miss Joanna Pis-O from Barlig
When you’re a 58-year old law professor and your students are millennials HALF your age, it can be a challenge to keep up with their language and mannerisms. But it can also present creative opportunities for bridging the generation gap while making them clearly understand a legal concept at the same time.
“Miss Joanna Cream-O?”
“Pis-O, sir!”
“Right, Miss Pis-O. Stand up, please. Can you tell us what a contract is?” I asked my bubbly student from Barlig, Mountain Province, who blinks her eye with every syllable when she talks.
The Chinese have a saying, ‘th, feat.e beginning of wisdom is getting things by their right names.’ For this reason I always emphasize to my students the importance of precise definitions of concepts.
“Sir, a contract is a meeting of the minds between two parties regarding the giving of a thing or the doing of an act.” Joanna said perfectly.
So it’s time to knock her off balance—my favorite technique for reinforcing a concept. It’s not what you know but how well you can defend it against attack that determines if you’ll make a good lawyer—or a mediocre greeting card designer.
“Have you ever heard of ‘m.u.’ Miss Stick-O?”
“Pis-O, siiiirrr!”
“Right, Miss Pis-O… Well, have you?”
“Yes, sir! ‘m.u.’ stands for ‘mutual understanding’ it’s a colloquialism among the young generation, to which you no longer belong sir, and it embodies the unspoken bond between two people sharing mutual love and affection.”
“I see. Do we have ‘m.u.’ between us, Miss Joanna?”
“I’m sure we don’t, sir. You’re a happily married man, sir, so I’m pretty sure I am not a threat to your chastity!” Joanna gushed while her classmates started whispering all kinds of side comments.
“I think ‘happily married’ is a contradiction in terms, sir” Deema interjected again in ambush manner.
“It could be for some, Miss Deema,” I acknowledged, “or it could be the Freudian wish of certain female law students who are single and sad.” The class went, “Oooooooh…!” while Deema rolled her eyes…SIDEWAYS this time.
“Back to you Miss Joanna Jell-O…”
“Pis-O, Siiiiirrr!!!”
“Right, Miss Pis-O…I understand what you implied when you correctly side-remarked that I don’t belong to that generation…”
“It was a joke, sir! It was a joke!” Joanna panickingly exclaimed.
“I know, I know, I’ll laugh at it during my spare time,” I said, amused that I already have the girl off balance when I haven’t even attacked her answer yet.
“Now tell us, Miss Joanna, if two people bound by ‘m.u.’ as you put it, suddenly find themselves attracted to third parties not privvy to their ‘m.u.’ how would they go about rescinding their mutual understanding?”
“Uh….I suppose there would be, I mean, both of them would have to serve notice of their intention to rescind, sir.” Joanna said, mentally going through the elements of a valid contract in her mind and realizing that you don’t walk away from a contract that easy. Some valuable consideration might have been exchanged already.
“Just like that, huh? Just serve notice? You mean like, ‘hey, m.u. partner, I don’t like you anymore so let’s just drop the whole thing, goodbye’ …like that?” I said mockingly.
“Well, yes, sir and also maybe there has to be some kind of mutual restitution, too.”
“SMS,” Deema chimed in nonchalantly.
“What’s that, Miss Deema? SMS, as in ‘short messaging service’? They have to TEXT each other to say their ‘m.u.’ is off?” I pushed the mocking tone another level up.
“That’s not what SMS means to our generation anymore, sir,” Joanna snatched her recitation back, “What Miss Deema meant by ‘SMS’ is ‘soli mo singsing’ sir, it means people breaking up a mutual relationship must return to the other party whatever was received while they were still ‘online’ before they hit ‘zero balance’, sir.”
“You had me at ‘isoli’ and then lost me completely after that. What is ‘online?’ What is ‘zero balance?” I was deluged by all the digitalk
“Sir, when two millennials are on ‘m.u.’ they are said to be ‘online’ and the whole time that they are going steady, we say they are ‘trending.’ But if they’re not careful, it’s quite easy to lose interest. When that happens in a relationship we say they are ‘low batt’ so they have to be mindful about disengaging while there’s still some interest left. If they wait too long, they could hit ‘zero balance’ and by then it’s game over,” Joanna explained.
“And you have to look for another one to enter into ‘m.u.’ again, is that how it goes?” I said.
“Yes, sir, and you have to hurry. You have to press ‘enter’ before the other person presses the escape key. Because today’s ‘BFM’ is tomorrow’s TOTGA!”
“Wow!” I said, totally bewildered by the storm of millennial jargon, “I’ve never felt so old until tonight. Can you run that by me again?”
“Sir, after the breakup, the girl meets a new ‘boyfriend material’ that’s what BFM means. If they don’t hook up right away, the boy could pick up interest in another girl, then he becomes ‘the one that got away”
“TOTGA?” I asked, starting to pick up a little bit.
“Yes, sir. And nobody wants to go back to ‘two point ow’. Never go back to ‘two point ow’ because that version has lots of bugs in it.”
“Two point ow?” Just when I thought I had my bearings already, I got lost again.
“The old boyfriend, sir. He is VERSION 2.0”
“Ooooh…that‘s what it is. Where do you people get these terms?!” I said.
“Various sources, sir—from dabarkads, fellow mall rats, gigmates, chatmates, selfie-mates, tiktok mates…”
“I’m waiting to hear ‘classmates” I interjected.
“Not so much from classmates, sir, unfortunately many millennials are school dropouts,”
“And yet many of them are bold enough to enter into a contract of ‘m.u.’ assuming, for argument’s sake, that it’s a valid contract, am I correct Miss Joanna?” I began to steer the class back to the Civil Code.
“For some, it’s the first contract they will encounter in their life, sir,” Joanna said.
“Well, it too bad for them, they’ll really be disappointed to learn that their ‘m.u.’ is NOT even a valid contract. And neither is their understanding of restitution,” I said.
“When you say ‘restitution’ class it implies returning the contacting parties to their original state, and that cannot be guaranteed by simply returning things exchanged in the meantime.”
The class was very attentive now. “This ‘m.u.’ thing that you young people enter into so casually can involve changes in the state of the parties that may not be repairable by simple restitution. Even SMS cannot guarantee that what has been done can be undone.”
“Suppose it CANNOT be undone? What if, in the meantime, the two people exchanged genetic material after shedding off their clothes and the female of the two parties discovered that she was gestating a future member of the family, what happens then?” I said euphemistically.
“Well, sir, the male of the two parties should acknowledge paternity and undertake to create the situation where the offspring would become legitimate!” Joanna said.
“So he must marry her. Suppose he is less than noble and declines to do so, is there a way to compel him?”
“Breach of promise to marry is not actionable, said the Supreme Court, sir” Joanna softly admitted.
“And why is it NOT actionable, Miss Pis-O?” I finally got the surname right.
“Sir, because a ‘mutual understanding’ being unwritten produces no actionable document. You cannot go to court to enforce something verbal, or worse something mental, sir.”
“That’s right,” I said, “courts interpret the law, class, and you cannot interpret what you cannot read. So while you can have all kinds of meeting of the mind, or of the heart, or liver, or pancreas or any other organ—unless that meeting of the minds produces a contract on paper in black-in-white, you cannot bring it to court.”
But I wasn’t through with Miss Barlig. “Miss Joanna, can you think of a reason why the law requires a contract to be written in order to be actionable, or suable upon?”
“Sir, a written contract enables both parties to allege or deny what their respective rights are, under the terms and conditions specified, sir.” Joanna completed her recitation.
“That’s right,” I said, “it’s for the protection of all parties.”
“Not all, sir.” Deema softly added, so soft I hesitated if I should even follow up her comment. But, what the hell, she might have a very important point to make so I said, “What do you mean, Miss Deema?”
“In the invalid contract of ‘m.u.’ especially if the parties abandon the contract, nobody remembers the rights of the product of the genetic exchange, sir. Nobody remembers the unborn participant in the failed contract.”
The class fell silent.
I didn’t know how to integrate that into the lecture, so I looked at the class–and they all looked back at me blankly. So we all just sat there speechless for a moment, trying to absorb and digest what Deema just said.
Finally, I just said, “class dismissed,” and everybody quietly walked out of the room.
“That was a brave thing to point out Miss Deema,” I said to the girl who was the last to stand up from her chair, “I think you will be fighting valiantly for the rights of many unborn parties who don’t have a voice in a failed contract of mutual understanding, when you become a great lawyer someday.”
I don’t know why she cried.
About the Author
The author is a writer and lawyer based in Baguio City, Philippines. Former editor of the Gold Ore and Baguio City Digest, professor of journalism, political science and law at Baguio Colleges Foundation (BCF). He is a photographer and video documentarist. He has a YouTube channel called “Parables and Reason”
About Images: Some of the images used in the articles are from the posts in Atty. Joel Rodriguez Dizon’s Facebook account, and/or Facebook groups and pages he manages or/and member of.