Chad De Guzman is a 17-year-old Filipino guy living in the Philippines with his mother. He's the captain of a volleyball team in his school, and is a traveler. Though he's funny, quirky, go-with-the-flow guy, he's pretty emotional when it comes to h...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
My mom and Bill met online a year ago on an online messaging platform Yahoo! Messenger. Mom uses a lot of messaging apps, and for a girl her age (she just turned 34 and yes, she had me when she was 17.), she gets very millennial. She has a Samsung Galaxy S8 and knows a lot of techie stuff. Me, though I have the S9, I only use my phone for Facebook and Music, and other stuff. You know, other stuff that you do when you're alone in the room with no one else in the house.
So back to Bill and mom. They met on Yahoo! Messenger when my mom entered this one group chat in the US section, and there she met Bill. Then they started talking and video-chatting. At first it was very weird for me because who would want to talk to a stranger, much less online? That's just absurd. I thought it was some kind of scam because you can never know with internet, but Bill wasn't any like that.
He's American, and he likes my mom a lot. He has already sent flowers, and it's every month, and he has sent me a gift. It's a PSP Vita, and I love it. I rarely play games but his gift is a killer time for me. When I get bored, I play. When I'm waiting for my mom to do her shopping, I play. That's the routine I'm used to do. They talk a lot. Mom spends a lot of time on the computer than I do. Me, I just use the computer to do my assignments and though there's an online game installed there, I barely play at all. I'm the type of guy who likes to go outside and meet up with my friends, and I do a lot of travelling.
I'm just 17 years old, but can you believe that I've already traveled many times? Though I haven't traveled outside my country yet, I've gone a lot of places in my country - like Coron, Puerto Galera, Laguna, Bataan, and this coming March, I'm coming to Cebu for a five-day vacation. My mom has already approved. I still have to get her permission before I travel, but she approves most of my travels since I'm always with my friends, and I have a friend who is already 21 years old who can supervise me. Mom relies on Claude when I travel. I have school, and usually, I just make up excuses to go and mom really doesn't care much about me being absent for several days in school, as long as I'm doing a great job academically. Attendance isn't really a big deal here but your performance does. That's how the way it works here in the Philippines.
Bill is 39 and has a son about my age. He has divorced his wife and has presented a copy of the divorce paper to us when I was doubting him. It was pretty amusing to see it. The Philippines doesn't really have a divorce law, but we have annulment, which can take up to like more than 5 years to get processed. Yeah, my mom spent almost 5 years dealing to get herself annulled from my dad.
They are in good terms actually. I have a stepbrother from my father's side, and believe it or not, my mom and dad are actually friends til' now, even though they have broken up. Even my mom is friends with my dad's current girlfriend. That's maturity, folks. Believe it or not!
"Hi, Bill! And good evening!" I wave hello to Bill. He waves back from the camera.
They are video-chatting again and mom giggles. "Good morning, buddy. Getting ready for school?"
