- Raw. Yeah, yeah, raw. And not any bugs, but only the juicy ones. My grandmother kept asking herself why was I coming from the garden with my beak yellow. It’s not my fault that Colorado beetles have those beautiful stripes on their backs… I actually wanted to save the potato culture ecologically, without DDT. My sister liked earthworms. Same grandmother, having a paralyzing phobia of anything that crawls, with or without many feet (“Bury me in a coffin of lead, so nothing gets to me!”) had the misfortune to be accosted by my sister: “Grandma, look, look, so do the chickens! Chomp-chomp-chomp!” Grunted with the earthworm between lips. I have no idea which one causes me more repulsion now, but both have mitigating clauses: I was 2-3 years old. :)
- When I was older, a construction site was opened two blocks away from my block. Allegedly, they wanted to build a high school. Even then, the mayors were ‘promising’: they excavated, poured part of the foundation, and… the mandate ended. So it remained for nearly a decade. In the end, a Penny hypermarket arose there. But when the pit was still dug, every year we had a mini-lake quite large from the rain and snow, in which mingled a wonderful chorus of frogs. Me and Tasha, both ‘curly’, ‘creative’ minds, couldn’t find any other playgrounds throughout the entire neighborhood other than that one, obviously! One spring, the whole pond full of “caviar” of frogs. A sort of gelatinous stuff, long, with black ovules here and there. I swear it looked like necklaces! Say no more! We filled two huge jars with water and beads-eggs, and I hid mine in the kitchen storage closet *evil grin*. Imagine my ‘surprise’ one day, when my mother started screaming in the kitchen as if the End of the World started. I found her with the broom in her hands, trembling and threatening a jar full of… tadpoles, because, my friends, my eggs had long became tadpoles which already had legs.. How is my fault if I have forgotten them in there?
- From the same box of mischief, me and my sister, 5-6 years old, at the country side, on vacation. The whole family concerned with shucking corn from last year, to make room for the new harvest. More to tangle the job, we were also “helping”, stumbling into the feet of others. I had a gray kitten, Miți on her name (D’ooh!), a really hard working cat. It was the only cat that I ever saw with a claw on a mouse, another in her mouth, another one struggling in her throat, and her eyes on the others that were leaving in great hurry their homes under siege. In fact, the offsprings of mice, the pink ones, without fur and with their eyes still glued, were remaining in nests, obviously. Motive for me and my sister to gather them into matchboxes, for later. And, hei!, what championships of mice offsprins racing did we do, like Paris have never seen!
Sleeping princess
- I wasn’t a mischievous person in childhood. Just curious. My sister is the living proof of that. I was only doing my experiments on her. And she endured everything with all the stoicism she had. We were even both laughing hysterically after, of course, we were taking our part of plugs from our poor parents, exhausted by our antics. Because justice was divided equally, and how could it be any other way, since we had long before implemented the Omerta law, and none of us would have uttered a single word about the real perpetrator? For instance, one morning some devil pushed me to blow the ink of a ball pen on the face of my sister, and tickle her face whilst she was still sleeping. Obviously, scratching, she turned herself and the surroundings around her (pillows, sheets) into a Tim Burton fairy. She finally woke up, puzzled by my more and more convulsive laughter. On another occasion, the same pillows suddenly “deflated” and I can swear that the bedroom never looked more fairy-land, Snow Queen would had crack of envy. Just like we’ve also cracked for three days, plucking fluffs stuck in the carpet, with tears in our eyes…
- I wonder, does my sister remember another experiment, this time.. stylistic? As I have been an artist since I can remember, it seemed only fair to me to “try my hand” before going into mass production, right? Reason for me to find out that I’m not a good hairdresser and for my sister to go to school next day shorn almost bald, with bristly tufts here and there… But, neaah, I don’t think she remembers, she couldn’t be that angry over such a small deed?!
Șoapte...
Tags: childhood, memories, personal thoughts, scraps of thoughts
