Name Calling

It was a time when Personal Computers here in the Philippines were as rare as Plasma TV’s in our present time. It was the mid-80’s and only the privileged had PC’s in their households. And Wawet was one of those privileged kids who had them in their home. And they didn’t only own one PC. The lucky bastard had three of them. Yup, they had three PC’s that they use in their home at a time when PCC couldn’t even include computer subjects in our high school curriculum.

And so, one fine Saturday afternoon, Eric Joson, Regie Fronda and I planned to pay Wawet a visit in their home in Marietta to get a chance to play some computer games on their PC’s.

As we were already approaching Wawet’s house, we realized that we had some sort of, umm, a name problem. You see, back in those days, Wawet wasn’t called Wawet in PCC. He was called either ‘Hilario’ or ‘Faustino’. (Calling him Wawet wouldn’t come until our college days in the Ateneo.)

You know how we were in high school. We sometimes called our classmates by their whole first names, or their whole first and second names (Rey Carlo, John Michael – my wife calls it the telenovela-double-name syndrome as in the case of Dingdong Dantes’ character who was always called ‘Carlos Miguel’, to be spoken in one breath) or by their family names (Pueblo, Atillo, Balajadia, Bersalona).

In Wawet’s case, everybody in PCC called him either ‘Hilario’ or ‘Faustino’.

But which was which? Was Faustino his first name? Or was it his family name? If we rang their doorbell and his Dad answered, whom shall we ask for? Hilario or Faustino? It would have been an awkward conversation if something like this happened.

“Nandyan po ba si Faustino?”, we would ask.

“Ahh, mga iho, sinong Faustino? Lahat kami dito sa bahay na ‘to eh Faustino ang apelyido.”, his Dad would have replied.

That would have been embarrassing.

So before ringing their doorbell, Eric, Regie and I had some discussion on two concerns. One, which name is which. And two, who among us would be the one to ask in case it wasn’t Wawet who comes out of the gate.

I am not quite certain how we were able to resolve the name problem. Maybe we just based it on Wawet’s class number. He was positioned before Regie Fronda in our class number. Ergo, his family name couldn’t have been Hilario. As to who was assigned to ask the question, I already forgot.

Luckily, when we rang their doorbell, one of Wawet’s sisters answered us and we asked the correct question:

“Nandyan po ba si Hilario?”