Growing Up Free

There's nothing sweeter than the memory of a wonderful childhood. It's like a gift that you'll keep on wrapping and unwrapping time and time again.

I grew up in an island in the southern part of the Philippines, a nice little municipality named Dapitan.

The place is paradise to me for it's where I was born and raised. I can confidently say, that it used to be my playground, and it still is, and will remain to be.

Being a little kid in the 80s was sweet, for way back then life was much simpler. The air we breathe was fresher and cleaner and purer, and there was just so much beauty in the innocence of life without the hard-wired gadgets that the present generation offers.

I remembered then that I never had a single toy. My parents never bought a toy for me or my siblings. But in the neighborhood, no one did, and no one had. It was a privilege that we all shared in the neighborhood and I call it as such because having nothing inspired us to be creative and resourceful even with our young minds. To me being able to go through that situation was a unique opportunity that allowed us to learn life's lessons at a very young age. It definitely gave us the skill to exercise our creative inclinations. There was a need for us to play like all other little children and so we innovated to satisfy that need.

There must have been some twenty or so kids and teens in our neighborhood and despite the age difference we all play together like little children.

Like watchful strategists, we implement our own games based on the season. Our games kept on changing month after month, day after day.

We used to build little houses made of sackcloth, twigs, branches, banana leaves, coconut leaves and anything else that we can think of that we can utilize as our shelter. Indeed, we were good at it and we tried to build the playhouses really well because as the darkness falls, our playful instinct enthused us to knockdown our neighbors' playhouses. The playhouse that stood erect the following morning, always earned our unanimous respect for unmatched skill of building. It was fun to rip off the walls, pull the branches that acted as posts, and tear down the roof. The rule was, if you had to do it, do it when nobody else was watching because intervention was not prohibited. Of course, none of those "ankle-biter" destroyers liked an aborted demolition plan.

We also played with empty cans by throwing our slippers or 'flip-flops' towards it to knock it down. We played with sticks, bottle caps, cigarette paper lining, and candy wrappers. We played with stones and leftover chalk.

We skip on vines instead of ropes.

We staged wars between two camps and we used bamboo sticks and raw papaya meat as our ammunition. We knew how to soak our ammunition in red hot chili pepper to sting our enemies.
We ran and chased each other under a moonlit night. We did hide-and-seek never fearing the darkest corners where we hid.

We ran for miles and screamed so loud, enough to wake up the sleeping stars in a quiet night.

We ran in the rain, and swam in mud-filled pot holes. We didn't care a bit cause we had so much fun.

We climbed up trees, we chased the bees. Ours was an endless journey of childhood fun.

We sang out loud. We sang in chorus. We danced under the sun. We had nothing but we had so much fun.

We watched sunsets. We collected shells along the beach. We built sandcastles. We sat by the beach and listened to the waves as they crushed against the shoreline. We wrote wishes on the sand while the seawater impatiently erased each one of them. We dreamt together--morning, noon and nighttime. It was such a joyful time.

We had no worries because we were just little children then. What a glorious time in my life!

The memories of growing up will be cherished forever in my life. And if I have to do it all over again, I wouldn't exchange it for anything else. And I simply thank GOD it.