My maternal grandma died while she was visiting us. She had a bad fall in the bathroom. My uncle got me bubbles to play with and to keep me occupied while mourners were coming and going.
I was playing in the yard and the local, mentally ill, homeless guy popped his head in through the hedges and screamed "BRUCE LEE!!!". If his mission was to freak me out, he'd succeeded with flying colours. Poor guy.
We were visiting a friend of my dad's. I was sitting on a stool. I forgot a stool had no back. I leaned back and fell. The back of my head hit the hard floor. It went all squishy. Many hospital visits followed.
I don't know how she did it, but my aunt got both my ears pierced using a safety pin while we were sitting in the yard, without me noticing it. My mom then got me a pair of pearl earrings, only to find out that I was allergic to the metal part.
I was digging out the burnt out pile of trash in the trash pit in the backyard with my little hands, just for the fun of it, and ended up getting a bad burn on my left wrist from some hidden ember. I still have the scar.
I was walking somewhere close to home with my older brother. Got distracted. Walked into a street sign. Went home with bloody, cut lips. It wasn't the only time it happened. Turns out the problem was with my eyesight.
My dad's car was a Jeep Willys with a leaky tarp roof. When it rained while we were driving around, it was always an adventure. A miserable adventure, but an adventure nonetheless.
Someone in the neighbourhood had a house surrounded by hedges that had a lot of yellow, angel hair noodle-like thing growing on it. We liked to harvest that stuff to play pretend noodles.
Our house had a well with a bucket and a pulley in the backyard. It wasn't child-proof at all, but, luckily, us kids weren't dumb enough to ever fall into it.
My yellow teddy bear had become too stinky and fallen into a state of disrepair. Mom declared Stinky Teddy had died and that we were to have a funeral for him. I loved Stinky Teddy with all my little toddler heart but somehow I agreed to it.
My older brother got praises for his drawing of fishes at kindergarten. I got jealous. I made my own drawing of fishes. It sucked. Nobody cared.
My parents would drop off my older brother and I at school in the morning and we'd take a becak (pedicab) ride home after school, through a dirt road full of potholes, some water buffaloes, and a lot of their cake-like dung. It was always an extra fun, muddy, and slippery ride after or during a rain.
We lived in a house without electricity for a couple of years. We used battery-powered lanterns as lamps and a car battery to power our small, black-and-white TV.
My mom had a big and heavy World Atlas book. It was one of my favourite books. I would leaf through it after school as a treat.
The second house we lived in, the one without electricity, had an ever-flowering jasmine bush that smelled heavenly. My mom would pick the flowers and scatter them all over their bed.
I was upset about something so my dad took me out for a walk. We stopped at a little shop and he bought me a cute, stationery set. It was one of very few good memories I had of him.
We'd play hopscotch, using pieces of asbesto ceiling tiles as markers.
My mom taught me how to write (cursive, natch). She'd instruct me to "go up, and down, and give it a curl" as I was moving my pencil on paper.
I saw my dad drinking beer. I told him I wanted to try it. He let me have a sip. It tasted as bad as it smelled. It was the first and last time I've ever had a beer, or any alcoholic drinks, ever.
One day my parents took us to the airport just to see a Concorde airplane parked on the tarmac from afar.