day two

my heritage.. kinda

first of all, i did not include the names of the spouses of mother and father’s siblings nor are they included in my precise calculations. i just prefer it to be so. don’t make a big deal out of it. second, the red cigarette thingie means that person is a smoker or was a smoker. if i was in doubt whether a relative was a smoker, i assumed they weren’t.

as you can see there are a lot of smokers in the family, particularly on the mother side. five of the manansala siblings still smoke, including mother, along with majority of my cousins. excluding the spouses of mother’s siblings, there are 15 smokers on the manansala side. 15 out of the 42 relatives equals to around 36%. that is against 6 out of 42 for the liongson side, which is around 14%. so if you add 36% and 14% you get 50%.. aha! the family is partly to blame. i guess the other 50% falls on me, but if only that other 50% was not heavily favored to the habit then i could have had a fighting chance! it’s the genes! can you believe 50%?? its like i’m half-human, half-cigarette. no wonder i have a big nose, i am proof of evolution! it has raw power to suck in large volumes of oxygen to counter the intake of cigarette smoke, and also to exhale all the smoke that went through my lungs. i’m like the big bad wolf.

i think i know why on the father side there are a few smokers. lolo was a dentist, lola was a pharmacist. one would immediately know if you were smoking, the other one would recognize the symptoms of it. i’m already imagining funny scenes that involve bakyas and ear-twisting. however, lolo died at the age of 40 when my father was still young, i don’t think father attempted to smoke until college. anyway, sister said that our other female cousin in the US might have been a smoker when she was younger. that means all females on the liongson side are smokers. interesting isn’t it?

and as you may have guessed reunions on the manansala side is really gonna be trying. Christmas reunions are held at our home and you would think it was new year’s eve with all the smoke. the average spawn of lolo bandong lights a cigarette at least once every hour. most of them also bring their own kaha. one funny thing about the manansalas, especially the male uncles, is that smoking doesn’t affect their physical appearance. i’m sure you’ve heard that smoking will make you fat, darken your skin, etc. but my uncles are still as skinny as mick jagger in somalia and as white as michael jackson playing the joker. only me and my cousins get the fattenings. there is this family secret we need to discover. and as far as i have observed, each manansala member gets to learn how to smoke at around age 15 to at most age 25. with about six more cousins still young enough to fit the age criteria, i bet we will have some surprises in a few years. so how does a family of smokers scold the kiddies who are new to it? “nagyoyosi ka na rin? isa ka pa sa manghihingi eh”. less is more..