I am Precious Joy.” This was what I tell to people every time they ask for my name. It was not until my high school years I’ve had realized the uniqueness of my nick Yes – the way I love it when people call me now. Perhaps by that time I had already reached adolescence, the time when I begin to learn how to appreciate things around me. Thus, appreciating my own sole nick Yes.

I have this theory…the reason I detested my parents for naming me Yes. I mean, they could have just named me something else; like there are oh-so-many names out there, for heaven’s sake why Yes?!

One afternoon when I was walking back home from my whole-day plays with my cousins, I got pissed off to some strangers who called my attention. As I passed them, they started singing a song that by that time I’d wished I’ve never been born. It irritated me so much that I had to run as fast as I could back home. Actually it’s a single-line lyric round song: Yes or No, Kapitan Kugmo! (Yes or No, Captain Booger!). They kept on repeating and repeating this until they lost sight of me. I went home crying. My mother approached me and asked me what happened. I didn’t say a word.

It was my tenth birthday when my teachers and classmates were invited to go to our house for my party. As expected, my family called me by my nick. There were many instances that I told them not to call me by that but by my real name instead. I had given them several reasons such as “they don’t know me by my nick” or “they might confuse it with its literal meaning” just for them to, at least on my night, just for one night, stop calling me by my nick. Well, the real thing about it was that I don’t want my school teachers and friends to know about my nick. They might call me by that. No way! Never!

From then on, I introduced myself as Precious not as Yes. Who might know the person to whom I am to introduce myself knows the line of that oh-so-stupid song and will start singing the same verse in front of me. I could not take it. At least before, when I was in my elementary years.

Now, I’ve grown up! Now I have already appreciated the beauty of my nick just the way my parents are proud of it! This time, whenever people ask me for my name, I tell them “I am Yes”. And as soon as they know that I am Yes, and start asking me the reason behind it, as I kept on telling over and over again why, I am tending to love my nick even more.