if you are my neighbor or if you come from the same place that i came from, i’m sure you would agree with me if i say that ours was a small town. typical of the small town set-up is where everybody knows everybody. where people shared the same mababang paaralan (government-run primary school) and the same classrooms and the same teachers. where people knew the most minute detail about almost everyone on town. where everybody go to the same church, the lone moviehouse, and the same pharmacy. where everyone is related to about everyone else. and where the roman catholic church is at the center of the town (and is also at the center of everybody’s social and spiritual lives) with the usual town plaza as the hub of rumors and what-have-you. it is your typical one beerhouse town.
this was the kind of town where i grew up. the town that i learned to love and hate at the same time. the town where i had my triumphs. and my defeats. this is the town where i first saw a girl naked. the town where i first witnessed a guy stabbed to death by another guy. this is the town where i learned to play the sport of tennis (yeah, this is what set us apart from other small towns — a clay tennis court!). this town was one big playground for me and my cousins (never really had some friends outside of my cousins and my own block since i went to a private catholic school at a neighboring town).
but what really sets us apart from the new villages that seemed to have sprouted from out of nowhere in the suburbs of manila is the way we call each other. to give you an example of what i am talking about, if i ask somebody from our town how kadyo is doing, the most likely response that i will get will go like this:
– sinong kadyo?
to which i would respond with:
– si kadyong anak ni gilying?
to which he would answer with a:
– ahh! si kadyong duleng!
it is really hard not to add a qualifier after one’s name since there are two or three persons sharing the same name in our small town. but what is worse are the guys given the nickname ‘boy’.
once upon a time, boys born in our town were a blessing for their fathers. this mean that the father’s virility was no longer in question. that the father’s lineage was assured of continuation to the next generation. so the most logical thing for a couple to do at that time was to christen their first-born male child after the father or the grandfather, or in some cases, after the great-grandfather. and since almost all of the couples have a male born to their new family, it would be safe for us to surmise that every first-born child was named after the father. it was at this time when they would call this child totoy being the junior and the namesake of the father. it was when the americans came that the suffixes junior and senior came up. and given the heavy colonial sentiments at that time, the name totoy was gradually transformed to boy. so if you happened to be named jose junior for example, the most logical nickname for you won’t be junior, jr, joey, pepe or totoy but BOY. hence, if you are jose junior, you would proudly proclaim to the world (with a slight american accent, of course) that — i am boy, the son of jose senior! (it’s a good thing that adding an h to one’s name is still unheard of at that time or boy will become bhoy).
that our small town were being populated with countless little boys nicknamed boy is quite taxing for those with little patience and memory when it comes to matching names to faces. again, the most logical thing to do was to give a qualifier after the name boy to make sure that they were talking of the same boy. it would be an embarrassment if in the middle of the town fiesta at the town plaza fair, one would shout for a friend at the other end of the line queing for the ferris wheel ride. Boy! only to see countless heads turning to answer the call. oh boy! that’s goin’ to be one messy predicament for you.
so now comes small town pinoy creativity in play. it would be an easy thing for people to use the family name after the nickname boy. but no! that won’t do. you gotta be specific man! for there were quite a few boys that share the same family name even. so one starts to use different qualifiers. here’s a sampler of the more colorful names that came to being:
boy tusok – the local snatcher or stick-up artist.
boy blue – nope, this particular boy is not eternally sad nor is he a blue baby. it’s just that he had what we now call small pox during his childhood days and you can still see the scars in his face. boy blue is short for boy bulutong or boy blutong. no one dare call him boy blutong to his face thus the name boy blue.
boy sexy – son of the star whore of the local beerhouse who goes by the name imang by day and sexy by night.
boy tibak – nope, he does not wear thongs! the history of the name goes back during his kindergarten days when he crapped in his pants inside the classroom in the middle of a lesson.
boy takas – this guy is not a felon. he was in the habit of sneaking out of his house. and as his father had a reputation for being strict, every time he would sneak out of their house, the father (and the whole town eventually) would know about it and would smack his butt with a leather belt with a double buckle attached at the end. still, little boy takas would sneak out every given opportunity.
boy lakas – his father was gay.
boy aswang – he is gay.
boy libog – his father, known as E–g libog was a habitue of the local beerhouse. the name stuck with the son. rumored to be a brother of boy sexy!
boy puto – son of the local maker of bibingka.
boy pilay – his father has polio.
boy timba – the local water gatherer or to be politically correct about it, the local water provider.
boy putik – the name came from the color of his skin.
boy dulas – that’s his last name spelled backwards.
boy pari – the altar boy adopted by the parish priest.
boy tulak – the town’s drug pusher.
boy tulak orig – the town’s kariton pusher. works as the public market’s janitor and did his rounds pushing his kariton (wooden pushcart) around.
boy bulak (aka boy galis) – during his childhood days, you’d see his legs covered with small cotton balls due to the galis that oozed with pus.
boy duleng – brother of kadyong duleng and son of gilying, the cross-eyed husband of andang daldal, the town’s chief gossip monger.
of course, it sure is one hell of a thing when you grow old to be 70 and is still called boy. or totoy for that matter. it’s a good thing that my father did not have the inclination to add a junior to any of his four boys’ name. and it’s an extra good thing that my name is the only one in our town being used or someone might christen me boy guapo! ooops, don’t forget the letter H! BHOY GUAPO! i wish! oh boy! oh boy!
