My mom liked to talk on the phone a lot. Often she would say yes because she was on the phone. When I was 3, we went to a YMCA.

“Mom, can I pee in the pool?”

She continued talking and raised a finger for me to wait. She put it back down. I waited a while before complaining again because I really had to go.

“Mom!”

“Yes, yes, okay?”

I immediately jumped in the pool and started swimming again. As I swam I peed whenever I needed to. Eventually we left and no one seemed notice.

____________________________

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“Is it okay to eat the brown spots on bananas?” I had already peeled it but wasn’t so sure about the brown, mushy parts.

“Of course, honey. They make the banana sweeter.”

I took a bite of a brown spot and it was sweeter, but it was warmer and mushier too. I decided that I would eat those spots, but that I didn’t like them.

Later in school a kid would pull out a banana with brown spots and throw it away.

“Why’d you waste that banana?”

“Are you kidding? That thing was covered in brown spots.”

“So? They make the banana sweeter.”

The kid started laughing, and I grew uncomfortable in my seat.

I love my mom. She’s just funny sometimes.

I was 4, and at a Chinese party. I’d gone to a lot of them when I was young. I played around with some other kids. At the party, they had lemon meringue pie! At the time the word was one of my favorites because it sounded baby-ish.

Mer-ing-goo (not how you actually pronounce it)

…………………………..

“Daddy, I want apple juice!”

I was thirsty and dad’s glass of apple juice was tempting. He sat around a group of dad’s, all with glasses of apple juice.

“No, you can’t have any.”’

“Why not?”

He didn’t answer me, but talked with some of his friends.

“Dad, I’m thirsty!”

I couldn’t find anything else to drink, so I started panicking.

“Daddy!”

“Fine, fine!”

He gave his cup and returned to his business. I smiled taking the cup. The juice sparkled and I took a good mouthful.

Ppptt!

Eww! This apple juice is nasty! Must be rotten. I spit it back into his cup and gave it back before leaving the room.

We were digging ant homes during recess. On the side opposite from the blacktop and of the larger playground there was an orange hill. It was covered in dirt and there was some grass at the top. The top of the hill led to a neighborhood blocked by a brown, wooden fence. Those days were blue and hot.

“Come on, let’s build some homes for the ants!”

This was one of my best friends. He led a small group of friends, including me, to the orange hill and we thought it was a great idea. We used rocks and sticks and our hands. They made holes in the side of the hill where the homes were going to be. I made stairs for us to walk on so that we could build more homes up the hill. I used a small, sturdy stick to chip dirt and clay away, forming stairs in the hill. We did this for days, not many ants actually living in our homes. Eventually, another kid started his own group. We noticed them doing the same thing to another part of the hill.

“They’re copying us!” The leader huffed. And so both groups formed a silent rivalry. We started digging harder and our hands would be covered in clay. The dirt under my fingernails bothered me a little, but I could wash it out. Things were going great, but then a teacher noticed us.

“Stop!”

Everyone looked at her walk over. Her clothes shook in the wind, but her body remained an authoritative statue.

After being scolded, we stopped for a while. Occasionally we would go back to check on our digging and maybe add a little, but the idea died out with the school year.

A/N: Thanks to my followers regardless of who reads these or not. The reason being I haven’t really read many (but I have read some) of their work.

We decided we would throw water balloons at our teacher at the End of the Year Party. It was a good-natured joke intended to be a pleasant surprise.

“Alright kids, grab a balloon and carefully hide it behind your back.” This was one of the parents who helped plan the party.

I grabbed my balloon and did as she said. I could barely contain my excitement, not that I disliked my teacher. No, she was an awesome teacher.

“Come over, the kids have a surprise for you!”

My teacher walked over with a smile on her face. We were outside by one of the buildings of the school. On this side of it was a small, green hill that led down to a sidewalk. She faced us, opposite from the red bricks behind her.

“Now!”

Our balloons soared in a strife, hitting wherever they felt like hitting. My balloon was yellow and hit the wall but splashed her. By the end of the splashing, my teacher’s mouth was open and her eyes squinted behind her glasses.

“What was that for?”

Our smiles immediately dropped.

“One hit me in the eye.”

“Wasn’t me.” “I didn’t do it.”

Everyone was silent for a moment. We eventually went inside and I’m sure she had a word for the parents.

Later we apologized, and she mercifully forgave us. These things make you feel really stupid sometimes…

When I was in the first half of kindergarten, I lived in Delaware. I was bored and slumped over onto the wooden table ahead of me sitting by three other kindergartners. At the table in front of mine, a girl wearing jeans and a girly t-shirt was talking about moving.

“Well I’m moving too,” I said across our tables.

The girl walked over, her brown pigtails bouncing. “Really, where?”

“Mooresville.”

“Never heard of Mooresville, but I’m moving to Hollywood.”

“Me neither,” said a boy beside me.

She smiled and I felt embarrassed that no one had heard of Mooresville.

“Well, I’m moving to Mooresville,” I repeated proudly.

“Well I’m moving to Hollywood,” she repeated proudly. “Britney Spears is in Hollywood.”

“So, I’m moving to Mooresville,” I offered lamely. I hadn’t heard much about Mooresville from my parents.

“Ha, Hollywood’s better,” she replied.

She walked back to her table and I was embarrassed at what I got myself into.

At recess I was bored and didn’t play with anyone. I looked across pavement about the size of a basketball field. On the other side of it was the little kids’ playground. It was filled with mulch and surrounded by a black, plastic fence about a foot tall like the bigger one on this side of the pavement, but the equipment was smaller.

I was on the larger one, now in third grade. Inadvertently, I dragged my foot through the mulch all around the playground. I aimlessly walked under floors and around the metal bars suspending them and under the tube connecting the main part of the great playground castle to a tower and below the monkey bars… But I didn’t go through the swings because people were playing on them. My foot had created dark lines in the mulch, and some of my friends on the monkey bars called my name.

“Could we be traffic lights on your roads?”

I turned to them, a boy and a girl, both brunettes. Their hands grasped the blue bars loosely. “Roads?”

“Yeah your roads, see?”

I followed their eyes around the playground and smiled at my work. “Sure.”

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When I was 6, I rode my first roller-coaster.

We were at a Chinese fair, in the middle of a parking lot. Perpendicular to this fair was an Asian mall, but it wasn’t a very fancy mall. As if to emphasis how Asian this mall was, the lighting inside was dim and reflected off of primarily tan floor tiles.

In the fair there were multiple rides, games, and things to buy as usual, but this fair was on a parking lot. As I walked around holding my mothers hand, I looked over to a ride much closer to the mall than the others.

The tracks seemed rusty, and there was a fence surrounding it as if to trap poor little Asian children inside. It was governed by one man who flicked switches on a switchboard on and off towards the entrance/exit. It was a mini roller-coaster.

At first I laughed at the screaming children. All it was was a small circle with a baby dragon on top carrying them that occasionally ran over a hill no taller than 3 feet. I laughed at them and thought that the coaster was for babies. Then my parents told me that my sisters and I were going to ride it. I whined about it and then scoffed about how boring it was going to be. Then I got on.

I sat in front, and learned first-hand how unpleasant the coaster really was. The roller-coaster really was just a circle, but the tracks were so rusty and bumpy that the dragon sounded like it was screeching at you to get off. The bumps hurt my butt, especially at the small hill. And whenever I thought it would stop, it didn’t. I screamed to get off, but I couldn’t. We went at least 15 laps around, and it felt as if the conductor had done it on purpose as he smiled at us getting off. My parents were laughing, and I’m sure they weren’t the only ones. The others were probably laughing at how much of a baby I was.

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