Sharing as sent to me...😊😊
Remember when in Guyana? Close your eyes, and go back, way back...
Before the Internet or the Mac. Before Uzis and crack. Before Nike and Reebok, before the NBA. Before Sega or Super Nintendo. Before burglar proofing and KFC. Before soca, dub and chutney. Before children's rights and women's lib.
Way back...I'm talking about hide and seek at dusk. Looking through the jalousies or sitting in the gallery. Remembering car numbers.
Licking your lips over condensed milk. Eating cou-cou and harslip and waiting for nuff hours before going in the sea pun Saturday afternoon. Drinking chocolate tea and cocoa tea and green tea and bush tea. Carrying sandwiches in a brown paper bag to school. Eating lead pipes and rock cakes. Bathing in de back yard in a basin. Drinking water at the stan pipe at school and getting ring worms pun you foot.
Getting chiggers from running in de marl barefoot. Hopscotch, butterscotch, hoop, Jacks, Police and Thief, Rounders! Pass-out cricket in the road with a lime Lying on the floor reading Mandrake and Katzenjammer Kids and Mutt and Jeff. Borrowing books from the library. Hula Hoops and jawbreakers and roly polly. Bathing in the rain under the guttering. Going for walks on Sunday afternoon. Band Concerts. Window shopping. Wearing old pants and your sister wearing a panty to the beach and collecting sea shells and pretty stones.
Wait. . .The excitement of catching lizards with a "blade of grass" hoop and meking dem have a cock fight. Killing birds with sling shot, cooking and eating them. Pitching marbles and thiefing mangoes and dounce and golden apples and sucking sugar cane. Listening to children's party on Saturday morning with auntie Olga on Redifusion. When you hear "Portia faces life" pun de Redifusion you run like hell out de door, because you know you miss de bus for school. When a calypso on the radio in Lent or Sunday would have caused a scandal.
When going to town was a major outing requiring serious preparation. Spending holidays by your grandmother and aunts. Castor oil and senna pods every month to clean you out! Eating dounce, goose berries, tamarind and sugar apple and tying up your mouth.
Climbing trees,and skipping rope. Making a Christmas tree from a guava branch with cotton wool for snow. You thought apples and grapes only grew at Christmas time. Cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, keeping an eye out for the heart man.
Having a pet chicken, duck, rabbit or goat and crying when it became a meal. Being tickled to death. Running till you were out of breath. Laughing so hard that your stomach hurt! Being tired from playing....remember that? Going to the shop for two shirley biscuits and a penny chewing gum.
There's more . . .fighting for the bowl when your mother made a cake. Churning coconut or custard ice cream on Sunday and licking the palette. Peeling cane with your teeth.
Remember when . . When there were no sneakers, only wash-e-kongs or pumps and you washed them every Saturday and whitened them. When you knew nothing of Rottweilers or pit bulls, only pot hounds and salmon-tot retrievers. When a penny was a decent allowance, and another penny a huge bonus. When you'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny.
When fashionable young ladies wore crinoline and boleros (now called a shrug!). When your mother wore stockings that came in two pieces and had garters. When all of your male teachers wore ties and female teachers had buns. When you had to be rich to have a car or a radio. When there was no TV and you went to sleep at seven o'clock. When there was no designer water. When laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels hidden inside the box. When any parent could discipline any kid, or feed him or use him to carry groceries, and nobody, not even the kid, thought a thing of it. When a neighbour could give you licks for being rude or anything, complain to you mother and you would get more again.
Or, the time when you father fall off he bicycle and you see and laugh and you get bare licks when you get home for laughing.
When it was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents. When every kitchen had a larder and every house a hot comb and flat irons. Milk came in rum bottles and had to be boiled and the cream was a great treat.
When they threatened to keep kids 'down' if they failed in school...and they did! When your mother used to say that your licks hurt her more than it hurt you. When adults spoke in code so 'little ears' wouldn't hear. Basically, we were in fear for our lives but it wasn't because of drive-by shootings, drugs, or gangs. Disapproval of parents and grandparents, godparents, tanties... was a much bigger threat!
If you can remember any of these things, Well, sir/madame, I swear you must be my age or a peer!!!!!!
