Memories [JC] One: The origin of ‘Pey’

JC… what a fun time it was. But I failed it, so I hate it. But the memories will always stay. Here’s one of them. It’s about the origin, or should I say, the leakage of the nickname ‘Pey’.

It was the end of the 1st year of JC. And I already know I screwed up my exams. But academic life doesn’t seem to be too important to me at that time. So one time, on one of the days after the exams are over, where everybody just came back to slack around [even though lessons are still continuing (in order to get a head start in year 2)], we were hanging out at the MPH (multipurpose Hall) slash gym. We were playing carom. And in those days, handphones were rare among us, even at our age. So, everyone had a pager.
There was this thing about reading other people’s pager messages and enquiring about their private lives. Everybody seems to be reading other people’s alphanumeric pages. Much secrets were exposed in this way.

So, we were playing carom, and Husaini, fellow repeat student (He passed eventually) was going through my pages. Then he asked me, “Eh, Ferdaus, what’s this: Pey, [some message, I forgot]?”
So I answered without giving much thought, “Oh, that’s from my brother. Pey is what I call myself in the family. That’s coz I can’t pronounce my name well when I was a kid, and somehow the nickname ‘Pey’ stuck with me.”

All of a sudden, the whole MPH started to roar with laughter. And much later, Najeed says, “Can I have some ‘Pey’per? (paper)” WTF? That was totally random, man! I thought, “Haha, good joke. It’ll be over by tomorrow.” I was wrong.

From then on, the few of us in the MPH (around 4 or 5 guys) spread the word of Pey. Soon, all my friends in JC joked about it. But the thing was, it did not end as a joke. It became habit. Apparently, Ferdaus is too hard to pronounce. Too many syllables. Everybody started calling me ‘Pey’. Even the hockey coach, Samad, called me ‘Bey’. WTF man! After a while, I just accepted it. It’s not gonna change anyways.
The weird thing was, I was never called by my real name anywhere, except maybe in kindergarten and primary school. Even there, the teachers, chinese ones, could never pronounce my name right. It was 'ForThose', or 'Ferduas' or some other crap. In secondary, I was called, ‘Amzahman’ by the Chinese and ‘Pedas’ by the Malays. In JC, I was called ‘Pey’. Luckily, in Poly, Ferdaus came back. Don’t know what they’re gonna call me in NS.