In the community of half-dilapidated apartments where I used to live during my young childhood, there was one playground. It was a square-shaped playground with a huge willow in the middle. My friends and I used to play there a lot. We were particularly fond of the slide and the carriage-shaped swing, and once we started playing with one of them, we easily spent the whole afternoon in one spot, inventing new stories and games one after another.
Before dusk, our mothers would come to pick us up. But not wanting to end our fun time together, my friends and I would do everything we could to distract our mothers. Usually, the best strategy was to guide them to start chatting with each other because once they started talking, they forgot about us, leaving us in peace for another hour or so.
But after an hour, our mothers remembered their original mission.
“Girls,” they would call out to us. “Time to go home!”
Disappointed, my friends and I would try to distract them again, but at this point, it was of no use. Supper time was approaching, and our mothers were determined to take us back home.
There were half-broken concrete walls surrounding the playground. They were not very high and quite safe to walk upon even for us young children. When my friends and I understood that there was no way we could stretch our time together for the day, we always asked our mothers for one last favour.
“OK, but we’ll walk on the walls now. When we complete the walk, we can go home.”
Upon receiving the permission from our mothers, my friends and I jumped onto the wall and walked in a line. The walk was thrilling due to the uneven surface of the walls, the changing scenery, and occasional gaps where we had to make a small jump to get to the other side.
We walked as slowly as possible, and when we made the whole circle and came back to the entrance, we were finally ready to go home.
“Bye! See you tomorrow!”
That was the daily ritual between the little girls and their mothers once upon a time in the community of tiny half-dilapidated apartments.