Anecdote

Anecdote.

I was born in a family where education wasn't as important as putting food on the table. I could say that, I was born in a poor family but food wasn't scarce. My father was a hardworking man whose first priority was to make sure we were all fed and got educated. 

The earliest memory I had was when I was playing hide and seek with my siblings or maybe my friends. I hid behind a plank of wood which was place upright. I didn't realised there was a nail sticking out of it and it cut my thigh. It was big - about 3 centimetres long and the cut was deep but I was too afraid to let my parents know about it. Hence, I wasn't brought to the hospital for stitching and  the scar was a big as ever. Still visible till today. 

Besides, I also remember when I was young and carefree, I loved to climb the guava trees in front of my house. It wasn't ours. It was our neighbours trees but they didn't mind the village kids climb it and pick the guavas. Big, small and even the unripen ones were taken off the trees. but kids at that time didn't waste the food, they ate it even when it wasn't ripe. We were used to be like that. I really loved the memories when I remember about it. Climbing trees was so much fun as a kid. I didn't feel heavy like when I'm not. I was nimble and agile. 

Talking about climbing trees and experiencing nature, there was this one time my friends organised an expedition to go into the jungle at the hill behind our house. I wasn't really a dense jungle. It was secondary jungle but still felt like a real ones when you were a small child. My neighbours, I remember Nuar and Aid, brought some food to eat in the jungle in case we got hungry. I didn't know what to bring cause I think was too small to even know what we were doing at that time. Ouh, I remember they brought ropes to tie some low hanging branches to mark our ways home so we didn't get lose in the jungle. It was fun. 

One more thing, not too far from my wooden house, there was a lake formed from tin ore mining. It was beautiful and huge. My dad used to take me fishing there and we got tilapias and catfish. The village kids loved to do one activity that was forbidden in our family which was bathe in the lake. Well, I did just that with my brother, Daus. There was this one time, we were caught red handed while swimming there. My dad caught us and caned us so hard and I got away. Well, I had to run as fast as i could. I managed to grab my clothes, If I was mistaken. But Daus didn't. he ran naked. I can't believe I still remember that. I believe that my father didn't allow us the bathe there because It wasn't safe. Imagine how mining lake was like. It's very deep in the middle because they had to dig deeper into the earth to mine the tine ore. We also heard stories that people especially young children drowned in the lake. 

Life was so simple back then where we lived our life without gadgets and everyone went out and play. No body stayed at home until magrib. Magrib was when my mak would shout to us so we returned home and showered. I was so happy back then.