One side of my family has the type of last name that you know only your relatives can have. Meaning if someone has it, you’re related to that someone for sure.
And no, it’s not Zobel De Ayala, dang it. But Uichanco’s good enough for me. :)
1980s Uichanco heads
Lately, my Tita stumbled upon an Unfamiliar Uichanco online. I was unofficially assigned (i.e. Mom made me kulit) to get in touch with her, to ask her who her parents are, because we were all going “WTF? I’ve never heard of her!” And not having heard of a Uichanco is, in itself, unheard of. We’re currently still waiting for a response, hoping we didn’t scare her off.
You might think this is incredibly self-centered of us to assume we “own” the name, so to speak, but really we do! I’m aware it is possible we’ve just lost track of all the members of our huge “clan.” But there is one reason this is kind of more intriguing than it should be:
There is a Legend that’s been thrown around the family dinner table more than once before. And so the lookout for unknown Uichancos has always been quietly going on.
Why don’t you lean back, sit comfortably around the campfire in front of the monitor and let me tell you the story.
Submitted to the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this story:
The Tale Legend of the Uichanco Twins
Legend has it that generations ago there were male Uichanco twins. For some reason, they just could NOT get along. Whether it was a feud between the twins, or between one twin and the rest of the family, I’m not sure. Either way, it got so bad that that the one twin left the house and never looked back, never talked to the family again. [cue collective *gasp* from audience]
Now according to Legend, we are the descendants of the left-behind twin. And the Unfamiliar Uichancos are descendants of the other.
This means that there is a whole ‘nother side of our clan that we have never met before! A whole lot of family members we don’t actually know!
[cue: X-Files theme song]
Like UFOs, there have even been rumored sightings! Not of the people themselves but, you know, of some kind of document that said something related to an Unfamiliar Uichanco. Some have said they’ve seen it in UP Diliman, a province in the Visayas… Some have even mentioned Australia.
Will the Unfamiliars and us ever meet again? Will there be a reunion between the separated twins’ families, several generations later?
That’s a secret I’ll never tell.
XOXO,
Gossip Gi–WAIT. Wrong show.
…
Forget it.
The truth to the Legend, we’ll never know for certain now. But, one must say as a member of this family, it is a pretty cool story.
So while we’re waiting for a message back from the recently stumbled-upon Unfamiliar Uichanco, I wonder — What’s your favorite Family Legend? :)
