When I was a Kid by Cristina Salas González

When I was a kid, I used to spend a lot of time with my brother and my cousins. As I am the only girl of tree children, and the youngest too, I’ve always been used to spend time with boys. That’s why nowadays, I feel more comfortable with guys than girls. We would go everywhere together because backthen kids used to get scared of monsters and ghosts.

My happiest and kind of sad memory is me and my brother at the back of my dad’s car waiting for him to give us some coins to buy candy and stuff. He would give each of us a $500 coin and a $200 coin to buy anything we wanted, but my brother, as he was the older one, used to steal my $500 coin and leave me with just one $200 coin to buy less candy than him. But once in a while he would let me keep my $500 coin and I would buy much more candy. It was really good. My cousins, my brother, and I would meet all of our neighborhood friends and play until it was late, or our parents told us to go inside, because we didn’t want to go home after eating all the candy.

We used to love playing “policias y ladrones”, “yeimi”, “boy” and “bote taro”, and we used to play all those games in our grandmother’s neighborhood. That would have taken a lot of the time from my childhood, that’s why my brother, my cousins and I are practically like siblings, due the time and experiences we used to spend when we were kids.

During those days the only worries we had were what to play and which team we would divide so we could win against our friends because we always had to be the winners. Different than now, when kids just get concerned about which cellphone is the best, what to post on Facebook or Instagram, the newest videogames, and TV shows. Now they forget how to play outside, get dirty and enjoy a park, a sunset, flowers and life.