i am not your mami

music : bebot by Black Eyed Peas

generally, americans are a loving lot. most of them call you honey or some other sweet name if they don't know or they can't remember your name. it took me awhile to get used to such casual name substitutes.

i think culturally we have a bit of that too, but mostly it's used by older family members to the young ones. elders call little girls nene or ineng and hija, and toto or totoy or hijo for little boys. my dad used to call me little princess (yuck) and i would always scowl at this. i told him to call me his little princess only if that princess wears jeans.

growing up, i think we used nicknames or petnames to address each other lovingly. since my name is so prone to mispronunciations, it was shortened to a few varieties like jop, or jop-jop. fanny and edong call me jupi. aeus calls me froda from my LOTR addiction. most of my college brods and sisses call me mamajop. here i'm simply joffin.


when i lived in west new york, a predominantly hispanic neighborhood, i got a taste of "mami". i know it's supposed to be sweet and all, but i don't like it. orestes, the funny and genial laundromat owner in my neighborhood used to call me mami and i snapped back at him one day and said "no soy su mami, soy nadie mami" (i am not your mami, i am nobody's mami). he apologized profusely. after my brush with the 400 pound raving washerwoman, i was forever tagged as "la filipina".

there's this cocky 8th grader in school who likes to piss me off. he hides under the protection of his bilingual class when i tell him off and always says "no habla ingles." everytime he sees me he greets me "hola mi mamita!" and winks at me. cheeky bastard. of course i am tempted to tell him to go to hell, but i smile back and mutter it under my breath.

at work these days, our customers call all the girls mami. what joy. i'd rather they call me "hoy!" i don't really know what it is, but there is something phonetically unappealing with mami or papi. i just can't bring myself to say it to other people, much more get used to it.

don't get me wrong. i can be sweet too. i call olivia my cutie and i call charly my moonshine, richard g, i call my chocnut, edong my boy gulay (veggie boy). i have names or titles for most of my friends, but that's it. most of the time i stick to people's names and just smile when i forget them.

so it'll take a while for me not to involuntarily shudder everytime someone yells mami at my direction. i'll have to train my right eyebrow not to arch whenever i hear it. one of the stockguys got scared when he saw this joffin trademark. he apologized again and again. poor guy.

so no more eyebrow arching. i ball my fingers in a fist to prevent my middle finger from sticking out. we don't want to get fired now, do we?


call me a snob. call me cold. call me a bitch. but don't call me mami.