By Pennie Azarcon-dela Cruz, Executive Editor
Sunday Inquirer Magazine
THE man at the Immigration counter stared at his computer, scanned my passport and gave me the eye. Oh no, I thought, it’s happening again. I felt like this guy in the movie “Groundhog Day” who wakes up every day to repeat exactly what transpired the previous day. Déjà vu never felt as scary — and as inevitable.
I knew exactly what the problem was: my name, my unbelievably pedestrian, overwhelmingly common, disgustingly anonymous name. For all I know, I must have had at least a dozen namesakes on the Immigration bureau’s hold departure list that particular night and the BID agent was just being careful.
Sigh. I probably share my last name with about 30 million Pinoys, 40 million if you count the two variant spellings of Dela (De La) Cruz. Out of curiosity, I once checked the phone directory to see how many Dela Cruzes there are, and was amazed at how prolific our common ancestors must have been. As sure as there’s a Filipino in every global disaster, there’s bound to be several Dela Cruzes in every barangay. Fortunately, we no longer have these medieval wars of attrition that saw legit heirs to the throne systemically decimated by their scheming enemies; can you imagine all those pretenders to the throne coming out of the woodwork and the endless wars of succession that we’d have to put up with?
Technically speaking, I am not a Dela Cruz. But I married one, never imagining the drastic changes that this little act of commitment would rain on my life. The first time I applied to renew my passport under my married name, I had to line up for hours for my NBI clearance. No problem, I thought; after all, my biggest crime was probably entertaining impure thoughts, and they certainly don’t have police records on those. To my horror, the NBI clerk beckoned me to a window and gave me a long list of crimes and misdemeanors that would be enough to put me on the national police’s order of battle. What the…? I muttered, scanning the all-points bulletin that listed estafa, concubinage, illegal recruitment, adultery, fraud, grave scandal and other crimes attributed to this “Josefina Dela Cruz.” A one-woman crime wave, imagine that.
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