It was fun to be a kid!!!
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More From My Memory...
After Grandpa (my Mom's Dad) died, I went back home to live with my own family – My Grandma and Grandpa (my dad's parents), my mom and dad, my four siblings and me, plus my six cousins from my aunt who was separated from her husband at the time. Although our large home boasted 25 rooms, they were all occupied at the time for many of my aunts and uncles were still very young and were therefore unwed. I can still remember the younger myself gleefully running around the house, floor to floor on barefoot, even though I had comfortable slippers to wear.
Us kids often liked to play hide and seek, or sometimes we would line up all of the chairs together, back to back, to form an imaginary train. We each took a seat, one behind the other, assigning the person in the very front of the line the job of the conductor. Other fun past times included parachuting - jumping from the top level of the bunk bed onto another larger bed below - and sneaking into Grandma's room when she wasn't looking, to snag some of her delicious cookies she kept hidden in a secret stash underneath her bed.
I distinctly recall her astonishment on one particular occasion, when she opened up the tin box of cookies to share them with us, she found the jar nearly empty! She screamed at us,
“Wah! Lay-day barn ma-lau-jae! Lay sig-sai ngor dee beng-gone!”
(“哇！你地班小猴子！你幾乎吃光了我整盒餅乾!”)
("Wah! You troop of little monkeys, you almost ate the whole box of my cookies!")
We stood there - all 11 of us... no... perhaps all 10 of us, as my sister was always somewhere in the house, but usually not with us since she was a lot older and didn't normally play with us - with innocent looks on our faces, even though on the inside, it is fair to say we were all feeling somewhat guilty and embarrassed. Grandma was still kind enough to give each of us a cookie anyway.
Our adventures weren't always so innocent - sometimes, we also tempted ourselves to danger.
Behind our house laid a creepy alleyway – a dark, narrow lane devoid of even a single streetlight. It led from one end of the road to the other. My mom must have told us a thousand times not to go near that place but, as kids all want to do, we would always do the opposite of what we were told. We would sneak out at night to explore the forbidden alley. It was always pitch-dark by this time of night, so we lugged a large flashlight with us to take on our adventure, shining it in front of us as we navigated from one end of the lane to the other. It always left us with quite a scary experience, especially considering how often we were told of ghosts haunting the alley. We were also told that a woman had committed suicide by hanging herself on one of those trees that we would be passing by along the way. This meant that once we reached halfway down the narrow strip, just before we reached the area where the tree resided, we would momentarily stop in our tracks, flash our flashlights on and off, try to examine if any ghosts were hanging from those trees. Then without a warning, we would start screaming and running, sprinting past the trees all the rest of the way until we made it to the other end of the alley.
I often wonder if Grandma suspected us defying our mother's demand we stay away from the alley - sometimes, when we didn't all come home together, she would send out the servants to look for us.
As for mom and dad, mom was a seamstress. At one time she owned a dress-making shop. She was so skilled at her craft that some of the local movie stars came to ask her to make dresses for them. They also liked mom because she always extended them credits and they could pay whenever they received the income from their films.
My dad worked in an office so he was away most of the time during the day, but whenever he was home he liked us to sing songs for him.
My mom also told me how she and my aunt could save money when they went to school together (not the best thing to do, but she and my auntie thought it was fun to do at that time when they were young). When my mom and my aunt went to school they would always start the day early so they could catch many buses to save money. They would get on the bus at the end where the bus conductor would be at the other end, then they would let the bus run past several bus stops. By the time the bus conductor was about to come for them to buy the tickets, they would get off without paying and wait for another bus to get on. Then they would repeat the same process on the other bus. This way they never had to pay for any bus fares and saved the money to buy snacks in school during the day. I find it interesting that they could do that in those days, but I don't think anyone can do this, considering how the buses are run today.
Our house was situated up on top of a terrace. We had to go up a slope everyday in order to go back and forth from home to school. Up on top of this terrace is a whole street of houses, backed by an alley without streetlights. Next to the alley on a higher ground was another area barricaded by a wire fence that ran from one end of the alley to another. I'm not sure what kind of area that was since we were all so young at the time and we didn't care to know. Inside that wire fence was a treed area, probably belonging to some other people, or perhaps it was a privately owned area where trespassing was forbidden. We would sometimes, however, climb up that high wall and fence to reach those trees to pluck some of the fruits off to eat. Oh, I didn't need to go by bus to school. You've misread me. The part about the getting on and off the bus I was talking about my mother and my auntie. LOL!!! :D
Oh yes, Ron, the kids did have a lot of squabbles. Hahaha!!!! I would often get in trouble that I didn't know about and I was beaten by a broomstick for reasons that I didn't know about.
Okay, I will write about those later. Thank you everyone for reading and commenting on my story! Your comments are much appreciated!
You certainly had a lot of playmates! And a lot of opportunity for mischief. It's hard to imagine so many family members living so close together without squabbles. You didn't write about those. Also, your outside world seemed to be the alley where you lived in the big city. You did mention that schools might be far away requiring bus rides, but you didn't mention libraries and other places where kids could go. I'd like to hear more about that.
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