The Road to 40 Day 37/365: Vino’s second classmate party

by | Jun 16, 2025 | Strawberry-Filled Donuts

With the schoolyear about to end, lots of Vino’s classmates are setting up birthday parites for their kids.

Che left on Sunday morning, so it was going to be Vino and me until the middle of the week, including this day.

I was set to drop Vino off at 12 noon for his classmate’s birthday party, and we were just lounging on the couch for it until I realized we didn’t have a gift ready.

We rushed a little bit to find a gift before heading to the venue.

Some of the boys went in to check on him, and when we opened one of the toilets, we found him standing on the bowl for reasons no one understood.

The mom left after seeing her kid go to his friends. Shortly after though, kid went out pouting, saying he wants to go to his mom. Host dad caught up to him because obviously, he’s under his care now. I stayed on because they might need a hand handling the rowdy boys.

I heard the kid mumble that he doesn’t “want to stay on some freakin’ kiddie table”. This language will not be tolerated under my care, but it wasn’t my party, so he gets a pass for now.

While he was outside, one of the kids whispered something to him, and he suddenly ran inside. We thought it was a great breakthrough until we saw him trying to eat one of kids’ head, to which the host dad sternly shouted at them to stop.

Later, host dad offered to let him sit at the adult table and kept offering him food which kid rejected. He at least stayed inside the hall this time. He walked to the buffet table and took a chicken tender and stuffed it in his mouth without a plate or utensils.

When I saw him join his friends (still not sitting on the small chairs, just behind the kids), I decided to walk around to pass time.

I had lunch at Monster Curry, which I don’t get to do with Che and Vino because they’re not big fans of curry like I am. I was supposed to pick Vino up at around 2PM, so I started walking back around 1:40PM.

Upon my return, I saw that there are a few adults there, including problem kid’s mom. The mom is really great, and she’s the parent representative for the class. But I guess she could be a little too nice.

Kid comes shouting “hey mom, did you know that Gen Alpha is the best generation? And you’re a boomer!” And mom tried to play along, saying “I’m not a boomer, I’m Gen X and that’s the best generation.”

Kid shouts “no, you’re a boomer! Hey guys, my mum thinks Gen X is the best generation, what a boomer!”

As this little interaction was going on, I was stepping to the side because the closer I was to the kid, the more likely I was going to smack his mouth for talking like that to his mother.

My parents never chose who I would be friends with, but I think I was raised well enough to distance myself from people who don’t share the same values that I had. Of course, I wasn’t going to dictate who Vino should be friends with.

However, I did warn Vino that if he decided to talk to me like that kid talked to his mom, he better make sure that he doesn’t need anything from me anymore and that he could live by himself already because he was certainly not going to get anything from me anymore.

I’ve always hated the idea of “gentle” parenting and found most of the brattiest kids I know who shout at their parents are products of this type of discipline. I don’t know any of you who subscribe to this and think that your parenting is “working”. If it actually is, congratulations.

But from what I see, they’re just bratty kids who always want to get their way and throw tantrums when they don’t.

I know there’s no manual for raising kids, and I’m not saying how I raise Vino is the right way. All I’m saying is there should always still be a line that you have to draw. If kids can’t respect their parents, they won’t respect their peers.

These are kids who will not hesitate to shake a can of Coke from a store fridge and put it back. Kids who would vandalize art because they think it’s funny. Kids who would sit in a bus and put their feet up on the windshield like they owned the damn thing.

Call me a boomer, but I think people like these are practically the reason why we can’t have good things in the world.

Anyway, Vino came home happy, but I heard that he cried a bit during the game. He told me that the people who set up the laser tag went up against all of them but they “cheated” because they kept pressing the “kill all” button from their main controllers.

It’s typical of Vino to cry when he loses. I sometimes get irritated by it, but I’m not about to tell my kid to stop crying when he’s sad. What I always tell him is that games are like that, and he can’t always be the winner.

If he concedes goals in football, he rightfully should get upset, but he should get back up and get ready to defend the next one. If he loses a game, there’s always next game. If there are better players, then, as the kids say, “git gud” so you don’t feel this way again.

It’s not just Vino. I learned from other parents that their kids also cry when they lose. When I was younger, I don’t remember crying a lot if I lost. I can’t say I’m not competitive, but you could argue that I never reached the pinnacle of the sports I played.
But at the end of the day, I understood games are meant to be fun. It’s something that I want Vino to understand, so that playing could be an outlet, instead of a source of stress when you can’t win.

On the flipside, it’s always nice to see Vino truly happy when he accomplishes something.

While on our way home, he said it was the first time he felt “important” in laser tag. Apparently, he picked up a sniper rifle and he had the most kills in the group and an amazing 100% accuracy.

Of course, I wasn’t able to fact-check this, but he only says what he was told, so I’ll just take it. I don’t know what kind of kid Vino is in school, but he does seem to have a magnetic personality that draws people in.

When we arrived at the party, he stood in his chair in celebration and the kids told the host mom. When host mom said it was fine, the rest of them followed. Then, he was apparently one of the group leaders in laser tag. When I picked him up, he was calling people over to do something, and the group followed.

These small glimpses help me feel at ease that he’s doing just fine.

We rested at home and later went to hear mass. I remembered we needed to pick up his goalkeeper shirt, so we went to do that after Church. We went to eat dinner in the same mall before going home.

Che was also settled in, so we had a quick call before we went to bed.

We were having fun with my emo hair, and Vino was urging me to get a haircut already because I got him to sit for a haircut last week.

It’s been almost four months since I cut my hair, which I’m hoping is enough for a stylist to work on. Maybe in one more week, I’ll get it cut. For now, my headband will be a fixture in my daily outfits. 

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