He read my article about our gay classmate, my personal hero, Jimmy Patacsil and how he carried me to the school clinic after a sound beating by a playground bully. So he texted me.
“Hello, Joel. If the nurse you’re talking about is Mrs. Abad, she was my late mother and she was our school nurse. This is Warren Lee Abad.”
My bad, I had gotten her name wrong! I said she was “Mrs Warren.” Actually, Warren is the name of her SON who was my classmate in Grade Four in Baguio Central School.
I replied right away, “Yes! That’s her! Mrs. Florence Abad, your mom. She was the kind nurse who fixed my nose!”
We were both very excited. “Darn it!” I said, ”kahit nung nasa Central pa tayo hilong hilo nako sa pangalan mo!” Warren Lee is actually his two-word FIRST name, and Abad was his surname. But if you didn’t know better, any one of those three names Warren, Lee and Abad could be jumbled in any order—which many of our teachers did.
In some teacher’s alphabetized class record he was listed at No. 1 “Abad” and in some he came in last, “Warren.” So this smartass took advantage of it during flag ceremony when we kids lined up in alphabetical order. If there was a program to watch onstage up front, he stood first in line with the best front row view, “I’m Abad!” he would say. But on days when he wanted to be inattentive, he stood in the back, out of the teacher’s view, “I’m Warren!”
Anyway, today, this smartasses’ proper name is DOCTOR Warren Lee Abad, MD! Wow. On second thought, that part didn’t surprise me at all. He always aced all our Science class quizzes.
But I’ll never forget her mom, Nurse Florence Abad. She was a plump kindly woman who now has wings in heaven. She was mother to all of us “Baguio Central boys” back in the day, and she didn’t play favorites.
One time she yanked me aside and started running her hands all over my body—it tickled so—and said, “My God, Joel, you are too thin. You’re not eating right.” Then he grabbed Warren Lee’s apple from his lunch bag and gave it to me. Nothing Warren could do about it except, as they say, if looks could kill…
Warren’s name wasn’t the only one that caused a lot of confusion. We had other classmates with reversible first and last names: Lee Ignacio, Aniceto Mateo, Andres Bernardo or Leo Clemente. That last boy--some called him Leo, some called him Clem. I called him "Speedy Gonzales" because in the game of "kin-natcher" you could NEVER catch this greased lightning! He was speedy as the devil which is ironic because today his name is REVEREND PASTOR Leo Clemente, Senior Pastor of the International Church of Praise in San Diego, California.
I don’t know what baby name book 1970s parents used but there was a lot of imagination that had evidently gone around.
For instance, the school’s music teacher had two sons our age and their names were “Lei Me Hope” and “Lei Me Luck” (both 3-word first names). Those are NOT Chinese names, explains their mother Anita. Each of those names is a complete English sentence that means “put a garland of hope/luck around my neck.” Wow.
My best friend in Grade 5 was the son of the First Baptist Church minister who named him “Reeve”—not to pay homage to the actor who played Superman, Christopher Reeve. Reeve was short for “Revelation” Velunta. Revelation, in case you REALLY didn't know, is the last book in the New Testament of the Christian bible. Wow.
The girls' names were no less unique. The prettiest of them all--heartbroker non pareil--was Soidemer Timbol. "Soidee" had the face of an angel so her mom Remedios thought of the most unique name for her: Remedios spelled backwards!
Of course, not all kids in our school were happy with the names their parents gave them, some obviously in haste. For instance, our school had the first TRIPLETS in the pupil roster. (By the way, you were a “pupil” in elementary, a “student” in high school and a “coed” in college)
Those three brothers, just born within minutes of each other, were ALL bullies—who wouldn’t be with the names they had. The oldest one was “Buddha” (I’m not kidding), the middle one was “Ba-kes” (Ilocano word for chimpanzee, again I’m not kidding) and the youngest one was “Bal-log” (Ilocano word for happy-go-lucky, or if you want a more mean-spirited translation: truant)
If their parents were aiming for funny, they overshot it because everytime these boys introduced themselves, everybody just broke out laughing in guffaws. And yet these three were so proud of the novelty that their names all started with the letter B. Wow.
Warren and I were unimpressed. Warren whispered to me, “I really think their parents could have used a little more imagination, assuming they had any.” I said, “I’m sure they do. They have a family dog.”
Warren said, “Really? What did they name their dog?”
“Kennedy.”
Wow.
