While getting ready to check out of our hotel room two Sundays ago, my family and I found ourselves glued to the tube by a rerun of James Cameron’s “Titanic.” We picked up from the scene where Jack, played by my childhood (and adult) crush Leonardo DiCaprio, confronts Rose, portrayed by the talented Kate Winslet, on how scared she is to break away from the constraints of the upper-class world.

The commercial break gave my idle mind time to go back to my days of being 12 years old in 1997, the year the movie premiered. Unlike the majority of the world, I didn’t watch it in theaters, but rather through a borrowed bootleg copy of the film. I had to make up for the VCD’s (remember those?) un-HD-like quality by sitting on the seat closest to the TV of our large gray couch.

I loved everything about the movie, including the literal and figurative steamy car scene. My attachment to that clip lay in my ability to finally be a part of my fellow classmates’ loop that laughed at its awkwardness. We’d imitate Rose’s hand slapping and streaking the foggy car window and collapse in a guffaw of giggles, secretly wishing that Jack was sacrificing his life for us (or actually, just for me) rather than for her.

So there I was, one of the many sixth-graders who in my elementary school in Singapore, were considered to be members of the upper echelons of cool. We thought that the power to rave about the movie strictly belonged to us.

However, the greatness of the film permeated through every grade level. During recess and lunch, Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” became the background music of everyone’s conversations. This was performed effortlessly by a fourth or fifth grader, depending on which one of them reached the piano in the cafeteria’s lobby first.

On some days, it would be a first grader. I didn’t know which one was more insulting &- that a 7-year-old could effortlessly play the entire song like a pro and I couldn’t even play “Chopsticks,” or that every time she repeated her performance, the novelty of my, yes my, love song with DiCaprio was fading.

It was torturous enough that every Filipino family party I attended consisted of at least one aunt belting out her own rendition of the song that could easily be mistaken as the sound of a fork being scratched on a blackboard, and now this? The damage done to my eardrums and heart are irreparable.

My family and I couldn’t stay to finish the whole movie, so my mom, who had never watched it before, asked me if Jack was going to die. “I’m not going to tell you,” I said. But because my dad had already gone ahead and retrieved our car from the parking lot and was waiting at the lobby, I had no choice but to tell her that he did.

“Yes, he died,” I repeated again, this time in a solemn whisper to myself. I raised my head and looked far off into the distance. “But I’ll never let go. I’ll never let go.”

8212;Kathryn Danganan is a communications senior.

8212;This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Daily Aztec.