The Road to 40 Day 194/365: Rainbow Leaves and Squid Games

At eight years old, Vino has a pretty complex range of interests.

Yesterday, I found a brown beetle attached to my umbrella. Naturally, I removed it and it fell on its back on our fake grass right outside the house. When Vino and I returned, the beetle was standing upright, but not moving. I told him about it and left it there.

On this day, we went out and saw that the beetle was gone. Once we got downstairs to wait for our ride, I realized that the beetle was actually on my slipper. I removed it, and it fell on its back again.

Vino looked concerned about the beetle and wanted to put it back upright. I voted against it, saying it might fly to his face. Our ride arrived with the beetle still on its back. He saw that ants were “attacking” it, but couldn’t do anything about it. I told him it’ll be fine, since I also left it on its back the day before, and it was just fine when we got there.

In the car, I could feel that he’s still a bit upset about the beetle. I had to explain that ants follow trails, and they will scramble if they lose the trail they are following.

Vino has developed an empathy for the most random things. He was very much against changing the worn-out cover of his iPad because he didn’t want it to “feel” worthless when the new one is used. He doesn’t want it to be thrown away.

He was very upset when his sand-filled toy was torn, but he didn’t want to throw away the empty toy’s head.

This empathy extends to small things, like insects and small, helpless animals. It’s cute and all, but I want him to understand that action must follow emapthy. For his toys, he should learn to better take care of them so that they won’t be in a state where it looks like it should be thrown away. For insects and small animals, he should understand more about how they live so that he would know how to take care of them.

I dropped him off in school, and when I picked him up, the first thing that he asked me was if I still saw the beetle when I got home. I said I didn’t, and assured him that it would find its way home somehow.

I cleaned up a bit before preparing to go to football training with him. During one of his breaks he proudly went up to me to show me an interesting leaf he picked up. He called it a rainbow leaf.

He asked me to take a photo so that he would remember it. Like insects, small things, and toys, he also finds joy in finding things like this, even if it won’t be worth anything.

I told him it won’t stay as a “rainbow” as it will dry up soon. He left it where he got it and went back to his game.

Again, I find it as an amusing trait of his. But it has to be grounded on logic somehow, otherwise, he will grow to be a massive hoarder. We have too many small toys because he found them “cute” but he usually forgets about them after a few days.

While Vino was training, I was with a couple of dads who I was able to kick a football around with, and later we had a bit of a jog. It was enlightening to hear insights from a person who was going through some similar personal challenges, even if we were sharing very vague details about our issues.

He was dead tired when we got home, and he asked if he could eat first before taking a bath. Our food delivery came just in time, so we put on Squid Games: The Challenge in the background.

I understand that Squid Games is not for kids, but so was Deadpool. Besides, a lot of kids his age are very much aware of the show, we just made sure that we were with him while he watched it. Note that he was the one who wanted to watch the show – it was too dark even for Che.

So this game show is a bit more cringy than the actual series, but it was at least tamer in the sense that no one actually dies. The people are a bit overacting, but it’s something that we can both watch so I guess it’s okay.

It was our background until we went to bed. His streak of asking to be woken up early ended this day, as he said he wanted a bit more sleep for tomorrow. As a result, we stayed a bit later than usual.

We had a bit of a scare because Che wasn’t replying until late, so I got a bit worried. Vino noticed me calling repeatedly.

Turned out, Che had multiple meetings that went late, and she didn’t get a chance to check her phone. At least she was finally done, and I was relieved to know that she was able to eat as well.

I don’t usually check up on her when she’s away to force her not to think about us and just enjoy her time out. But since I didn’t know what she was doing and who I could check up on, I got anxious.

Anyway, after she checked in, we were all just about ready to sleep. A couple more nights, and we’ll see each other again.