Some Childhood Memories

I remember having my elder brother, the one I call Diko, the one just older than me and my younger sister as my constant playmates.

We would play in the driveway (back then, it opened out to the street, no adult supervision. Thirty years later, the driveway's got a 15 foot gate, with irons bars topping it, kept locked from the outside at all times and locked from the inside from 9 pm till 5 am, kids will aso have adult supervision if they happen to venture out into the driveway, which is no longer regularly done) for some time until supper which was usually at 6 pm. Of course, we are never ready to get back in, as we want to keep playing. Mom will come out to yell for us. And we will ignore her. Then, she would make like she was coming to get us. We would still ignore her. When she actually gets to the San Francisco plant and motions like she was twisting off a sapling from it, that's when we come running. She would use this sapling to beat us home. And those things sting.

Another memory is of us playing house in our garden. We used to have pond with a concrete bridge crossing it. The pond would have tadpoles in it and probably had fish at one point. We liked the tadpoles. We would catch them and pretend they were fish we can cook. We did try cooking one time. My brother found a tin can (Reno Liver Spread size), got some uncooked rice, added water and set it on a tripod of stones, with some twigs for kindling, lit the fire and got cooking. I don't remember the cooked part. I think it was taking too long and it was time to do something else. I think we have also tried to cook some tadpole soup.

Then there was catching dragonflies and clipping their wings so they would not fly away. And stepping on a cockroach and holding it by its antler and scare somebody with it. My brother would also swipe at a fly, hold it in his fist, shake it up and throws the fly down to the ground and while it is dazed, squash it flat.

You can tell we did not have toys like you have in your childhood. We had each other to play with and the outdoors as our playground and whatever we can find in that outdoors as our toys. We grew up OK, anyway.