When Kids Play
A short extract from a story of my life
I grew up on the street. Not literally. I had a home, both parents and a brother. However, I grew up on the street. My friends taught me what music to listen to, what books to read, what sport to like, how the beer tastes. They taught me how to talk to girls, how to have sex, how to lie and how to steal. Literally-the good, the bad, and the ugly.
In the younger days we played football (soccer for non-Europeans)and basketball, in the teenage years we drank, we smoked. We got angrier and more reckless. Our innocent jokes turn violent with every passing year. Smashed windows, smashed noses, smashed lives.
Drugs showed up. Weed was the first drug I tried. I loved it. Then speed. And then the king of drugs — almighty heroin showed its ugly face. The imbecile mind of mine had no understanding of what I am getting into. Heroin is not a joke. Thanks to my friend who said, “Drugs should stimulate, heroin pulls you down”, I managed to avoid the needle.
I am jumping ahead of myself.
We lived in a socialist type housing estate, I guess Americans would call it “Projects”. The kids from my house were Russians, Poles, Belarussians, a few Lithuanians. I counted myself as Lithuanian, despite my father being Polish (Lithuanian Polish). Around the corner from my house, there was a group of kids who were Lithuanians, I joined their gang.
The first “joke” I remember, a few boys found a large mirror on the street, took it on top of the 9 level building and shone the reflection of the sun on the passing cars of the busy street. I was amazed by the bravery of the boys.
Keep in mind that we lived through “glorious” Soviet times and there were not many police officers around, adults of the neighbourhood kept things in order. Someone came and told them to break the mirror.
Autumn is the season when kids come back from the summer holidays, cellars full of potatoes. Bear with me I will get to what I want to tell you. One of us decided to take a full crate of old potatoes to the bush next to the busy road and throw them at passing by trolleybuses (a bus with two sticks on top of its roof, the sticks were loosely attached to the electric wires above the road). We had so much fun that night, no one was after us, we felt invincible. We continued this every night after that. One night someone decided that potatoes were not enough, eggs followed. Fun and games.
Surprisingly we managed to keep this “fun” activity for days until one of us got caught.
The attacks on public transport halted, for a bit. Sometimes later, one of us managed to stop half of the city’s public transport for a whole evening but this story is for another time.
I will continue with these stories in the near future. I hope you enjoyed reading a short extract of my “happy” childhood.
