There are five children in my family (four girls with a boy in the middle), and six children next door (four girls and two boys), all of practically the same age respectively, except for Boy No.1 next door. We’d pair up: the older girls chatting across the fence, the youngest ones playing story-telling.
My siblings and I were a lively bunch. The girls would go around in shorts, climb trees, sing and whistle. We’d often invite the six children next door (and their dog) over to ours to play rounders (along with our dog). The dogs practically always got to the ball first, so we’d end up chasing the dogs around the garden in one boisterous frenzy to retrieve the ball.
I’d play marbles and fly kites with my brother’s friends—none of these girlie activities like playing with dolls for me! We’d grind up broken glass, dig a hole in the garden, light a fire with twigs and melt cow hide in a discarded tin can, add the ground-up glass to this gooey mixture, and then apply it to the kite string. The reinforced kite string would cut other people’s kite strings in the sky when our paths crossed, leaving our kite the sole flyer in the air.
The four girls from next door were soft-spoken and ladylike. They wore skirts / dresses, and were fair-skinned.
My mother was always saying to us girls, “Why can’t you girls be more like the Teo girls next door? Feminine and quiet.”
One day, the Teo girls said to us, “Our parents are always saying to us, ‘Why can’t you be more like the girls next door? They’re so lively! You lot creep around the house like mice.’”
(Singapore, 1960s)
I like this! Another version of "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence"
ReplyDeleteI had actually thought of the grass saying when I wrote that blog. Now that you've brought it up, I'm going to revert to my original idea for the title, and have amended it accordingly. Thanks.
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