Life Blog

  My 10-year-old son doesn’t always answer right away when I ask him a question. Often, I have to repeat myself two or three times before he responds. One morning, though, his reaction caught me off guard. We were in the car on the way to school. It was Boy Scout day, so he wore the brown uniform shirt with its badges—the scout logo and the Philippine flag. Knowing how cold the air-conditioning can be in classrooms, I noticed he hadn’t brought his school jacket. So I asked, “Gab, are you wearing a sando?” (A sando is a sleeveless undershirt in Filipino.) In a soft voice, he muttered, “No, I don’t have it.” I didn’t quite catch his reply, so I asked again: “Are you wearing a sando?” This time he said, a bit louder, “I’m not wearing it.” I heard him, but I still couldn’t believe it, so I asked a third time, raising my voice: “You’re not wearing a sando?!” This time he shouted back: “I’m not wearing a sando!” To check for myself, I slipped my finger between the buttons of his shirt—an...