Why I Have This Nickname by Danilo "Balty" Baltazar

NOTE: Sumali ako sa Toastmasters' Club dito sa San Miguel Corporation (SMC), Mandaue, Cebu. Libre ang beer t'wing meeting. Ito ang una kong speech na ang tema ay ang pagpapakilala sa sarili.

Someone told me that if you're cute when you were young you become ugly as you get old, and the opposite is true. As I stand here in front of you, I'm sure you can imagine how very, very ugly I was then. I was so ugly that my mother, the only person who should have loved my face, said to her friends that my younger brother was handsome. Have you noticed anything about the adjective? It wasn't even in the comparative form! And the sad part was that it was I, not my brother, who was present in that conversation.

When I was in Elementary, we were not poor but my parents did not let me feel we were rich. They gave me only one peso as my “baon”, my pocket money, enough to buy me two bottles of Coke, at fifty centavos each, one for recess and the other one for lunch. You see, my only motivation then of going to school was that I was able to buy and drink Coke, so that's the only thing that I bought with my one peso. I didn't care for the education, nor did I have many friends. Today, it's different. My motivation of going here in SMC Toastmaster's Meeting is the beer...and the opportunity to learn...and, of course, the people.

Back to my story.

My problem, then, was that I needed to add fifteen centavos as deposit for the bottle. After spending fifty centavos during recess, I only had exactly fifty centavos for lunch, and no extra for the bottle deposit. So, during recess, I would scour around the campus, trying to find any bottle lying around, thrown by a rich kid who didn't bother lining up and getting back his money.

Being ugly and being poor is a deadly combination that undermines a child's self-esteem. Yes, I had a very, very low one. It was so bad that I contemplated on killing myself. Fortunately, I had low tolerance to pain, and I knew that thrusting a knife on my chest will hurt a lot. I also abhorred taking medicine, so, drinking poison was not an option. Furthermore, I cannot throw myself down the stair to break my neck; living in a bungalow, there were only four steps on our stair, enough for one complete cycle of Oro-Plata-Mata.

During this time my classmates were forming new nicknames, based on our surnames. So, we had Alvi Alvero, Rebi Rebosura, Rozy Rozal....my classmate loved that last one. I wondered why for we were in an all-boys' school.

When I reached high school the very first thing our classroom advisor did was to ask us what our nickname was. An idea came to my mind -- here is a chance to “kill” my old self, Danny, and give birth to a new one, Balty, a timely lesson for this season of Lent. So, I decided to give Balty as my nickname, which stuck. In fact, my mother, sister, and brother are now calling me Balty. It's as if Danny never existed.

Committing this virtual suicide was good because, first, it was painless. And, second, I did not break the sixth commandment.... Sorry, the sixth commandment is “Thou shalt not commit adultery”. That, I often break. What I meant was that I did not break the fifth commandment.... Yes, that's the one!

I now believe that with this simple act of changing my nickname from Danny to Balty helped me a lot to achieve what I am now. It has made me more outgoing, less shy, and an eetsy-bitsy-teeny-tiny bit funnier. I still have low self-esteem, but, at least, I was able to remove two “very's”.