The Road to 40 Day 340/365: Reminiscing a Teachable Moment

Vino and I stayed home most of this day, as I got my bike fixed and didn’t really plan on leaving the house.

I got a home service to check out my bike, and he cleaned and tuned it up. He said the bike was stored well, but he replaced my interior tires just to be safe, as it has been in storage for close to three years.

I’m happy with it, and I am looking forward to teaching Vino how to ride it and riding it myself by next week.

In the afternoon, I asked Vino to go with me to the supermarket to buy some ingredients for cooking dinner. Over the past couple of days that we were at home, Vino and I have been doing our own things at home. We’d play a bit, but most of the day, he’d be on a call with his friends.

When we went outside, it was a chance for us to just talk about stuff. We talked about his favorite meal in Korea, which, to the surprise of no one, was the Jeju Black Pork we had at Black Ranch.

I took it as a chance to talk about our episode there.

He was playing a game after he finished eating. Che playfully distracted him, as she had done earlier. But this time, he got angry, cried, and hit Che’s face.

I was livid. I’ve hurt people because they hurt Vino, and while I haven’t been in a situation like that with Che, I have never physically harmed her. With Vino hitting Che, I didn’t know how to deal with it, because it’s Vino.

We’ve always talked about him taking the games too seriously. Responding with physical violence is a level that I said I would not tolerate. We talked extensively to the point that I cursed at him, saying “For a f*ckin’ game, you’d hurt your mom?”

He was quiet for the most part after that. It took a while before he returned to his usual demeanor, but I know that he was rattled.

Now that a few days have passed, I asked him if he meant to hit Che’s face. He said he aimed for her back, but she moved, and he accidentally hit her face. I figured that much, but he wouldn’t say anything when I gave him a chance that day.

I asked him if he got hurt when I cursed at him, and naturally, he said yes. I could see that he was feeling sad, recalling the incident.

I apologized for cursing at him. When I apologize, I usually explain the reason behind it, but for this one, I just said sorry. I told him that while I never hurt Che physically, I’ve hurt her with my words a lot of times before, so I know that he might have been hurt by what I said and how I said it.

I told him that I didn’t want cursing to be normalized in his language, which is why I chose to hurt him with my words. I wanted him to understand that words can pierce the heart as much as physical violence can hurt one’s body. I hoped that now that he got hurt by words, he would be more careful in using it, even if he hears it from others or on shows.

I reminded him again about being too serious about his games, to which he said – with almost tears in his eyes – that the game that Che interrupted snapped a 51-game win streak in his Roblox game, Rivals. With that information, I felt like his frustration was kinda warranted, so I had to tell Che about it later when she got home.

After I cooked dinner, I went to the room to watch with Vino.

I know I have a lot of flaws as a person, and how I handle things is far from perfect. However, I always want to try to help Vino grow up to be better than me in every way. For things like our outburst in Jeju, I didn’t want to sweep it under the rug just because we’re fine now.

We’re calmer, and both had time to reflect, so I wanted us to talk about it so he wouldn’t misunderstand it as plain cruelty. The way I was raised made it difficult for me to admit fault and just say sorry, so I’m trying to learn how to do that with Vino so that we can normalize talking about feelings and faults as he grows older.