Reliving the Good Old Days

The busyness nowadays made me long for a simple life like way back during my pre-school years when I was still in Iloilo.I spent most of my time with my three male cousins – flying kites in rice fields, hunting fighting spiders in the woods, playing hide-and-seek in the tangle of trees and bushes around our house. We would spend hours in river bank sitting in tree branches with our naked feet dangling touching the water, throwing earth to the water and watching the ripples fade.When we were in high spirits, we would skim the water with pebbles and compete who could make the most number of skips, or at times prove our manhood by competing who could pee the farthest.Sometimes we would bring used mosquito nets and sweep the shallow part of river for fish and shrimps. Those who are adventurous enough would grope the holes for small crabs, and those who are very cute sometimes get pinched and end up having long naps under the shadow of mango trees.

If rain comes, we would bring fish poles since the water is high with brown slippery earthworms as baits.If I remember that moment, I shudder and could almost imagine the agony of earth worms as they shrink and wiggle once we cut their slender bodies into three, and pierce them with fish pole hooks. We would stand like scare-crows without moving afraid that the movement of our shadows would scare the fishes, holding our poles and moving it slowly right to left and vice versa, like a pendulum, waiting for the fishes to bite. Once the string of the pole jerks, we would yank it, and behold, a cat fish is shaking wildly and hanging on the hook.