Pennie Azarcon-dela Cruz
Executive Editor, Sunday Inquirer Magazine

WE all have them: habits we relish in private but would be too embarrassed to admit in public.  You know, like watching Maricar Reyes in that Hayden Kho video so many times you’re actually growing hair on your palm just as the good nuns warned in grade school.

Or hiding the mic when you go to the restroom so you can have another go at “My Way” at 3 a.m. before your host hurriedly packs the videoke and call it a night.  Solving Sudoku puzzles during a serious management meet because the financial reports are just too boring. Surfing your Facebook account in the middle of a tight deadline in case someone tagged you. Taking too long in the Starbucks bathroom flossing your teeth even when there’s a long queue out there. Texting a dirty joke just as the light turns green because your BFF has to hear it from you right now.

You know, stuff we do despite them being shamelessly crass, inconsiderate, politically incorrect, in poor taste, self-indulgent, downright stupid or wicked.

“Don’t tell my mother,” this guy says on cable TV, as he traipses over to the Amazon to brave the piranhas and ogle bare-breasted tribes.  And we all feel that way as we indulge our secret pleasures, habits that could indict us before a jury of grim-faced teetotalers but which we consider as endearing evidence of our splayed feet of clay.  They humanize us, make us accessible social beings, give us enough fodder for the confessional, and future material for a memoir or a book’s back cover.  Who knows, when we get famous someday, “Entertainment Tonight” can do one whole segment on it.  And yes, even talk show queen Oprah admits to enjoying a whole season of “Grey’s Anatomy” in one sitting, even as her Save the World “to do” list piles up.

Most of all, we indulge them because they feel good, damn it!  People call them guilty pleasures, hinting at vague feelings of discomfort, that tiny squeak of conscience smothered in the full volume sounds of MTV.

I call them Giddy Pleasures, my Type A competitive personality finally subdued by this very visceral need to enjoy life while I can.  So here’s my top 10 list of giddy pleasures, no apologies:

1. Cheesecake. You’d think that because I bake this stuff, I would know there’s enough butter, eggs, cream cheese and heavy cream in here to tip the cholesterol level among the starving kids in Ethiopia or Calcutta.  Not to mention clog up my severely-challenged arteries.  But well, like someone said, life’s short and unpredictable so eat dessert first. And always.

2. Lapid’s chicharong may laman. Go bite into one. Let’s see you fight the urge to finish the whole pack.  Just keep telling yourself: the acid in the spicy vinegar neutralizes the fat while the vinegar’s garlic, ginger and finger chilis provide enough heat to melt the cholesterol.  Yeah, right!

3. Reading Dave Barry or David Sedaris in the middle of a tight deadline for a serious story.  Part of research, right?  Just trying to find the perfect phrase to describe the human rights violations I’m writing on at the moment.

4. Reading Edna Buchanan crime novels and Dominick Dunne roman a clef novels.  Fast-paced writing and plot-driven whodunnits from Miami Heralds’s top crime reporter, and the thrill of guessing the identity of infamous society figures in Dunne’s true-crime novellas.  What’s not to like?

5. Watching “Seinfeld” and “Sex & the City” replays.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

6. Coffee, especially flavored coffee. Never mind the caffeine overload, this is the inseparable companion of number 1.  After all, life comes in complementary two’s:  yin and yang, night and day, sinner or saint, fat and blubber…that’s just about the long and short of it.

7. Reality Shows: “Amazing Race,” “Wife Swap (Trading Places),” “Top Chef,”  “Project Runway.”  Just for the pleasure of feeling infinitely superior to this bedraggled batch who’d do just about anything (mainly land on their ass) on national TV for 15 minutes of fame.  And yes, hear some colorful bitching around that this time, isn’t coming from me.  And hey, the recipes and the fashion styles aren’t bad either.

8. Watching “Air Crash Investigation” or “ Seconds to Disaster.”  People at home hate me for this, especially since they usually fly with me on out of town vacations.  The scolding goes:  “Why anticipate the tragic?  Do you have a death wish?  So what’s the point?  When the plane crashes, you die. End of story.”  Aha!  But there’s the rub, I say.  I watch because I learn survival tips from these shows: why you should run downwards during a fire, especially inside a tunnel or constricted space.  Why you should never inflate your life vest until after you’ve exited your plane that’s now sinking into the water.  And so on.  It’s pure logic dramatized and proven right by survivors.

9. “The Simpsons” and “South Park.”  Witty parodies of serious issues du jour.    Now you know where to lay the blame for my juvenile sense of humor.

10.  Sleeping in on Sundays.  Granted; I’m not your regular 9 to 5, 40-hour workweek Jane, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be a fulltime sloth on weekends.  Let the kids eat take-out one more time. Give the dust mites a break. The helpers can look in the freezer and decide what’s for dinner.  Not picking up after the hubby today.  No, I’m not getting up earlier than 12.   Why, even the Lord rested on the 7th day.  So there.

Now go away and let me stew in guilt.  That little pang of unease is worth all the pleasures that provoked it.