1989
I can’t really remember how it started. It was an unbearably hot summer day. None of us had the energy to run around and play as usual. I was with two friends in the garden grumpily staring at the ground when one of them had an epiphany: “My mum is not home. Let’s go to my house and die!”
“And how are we going to die?” I asked. The girl smiled broadly, “Leave that to me. All we have to do is eat fish food.” “Fish food?”, I replied disappointedly. “Fish food” the girl insisted. “It’s made for goldfish, not humans, so if we eat it we will surely die.”
We all agreed enthusiastically. “I am already seven and a half so I don’t need to live any longer” I decided. Our other friend was already walking forward, singing loudly “We are going to die, we are going to die, we are going to die!” An elderly passer-by remarked “We all are my son but there’s no need to hurry.”
But we were in a hurry. After we entered our friend’s house we hastily laid on the old wooden floor of the stuffy living room. Our heads were slightly touching as the three of us spread out into the shape of something like the Mercedes logo. Our friend handed us pressed seaweed flakes. We placed them in our mouths and waited as they slowly dissolved. I expected them to taste bad but they didn’t.
We laid there with closed eyes for almost five minutes. My other friend got impatient. “Are you dead yet?” he whispered to me. “No, you?”, I replied “No! I’m not even close to being dead.” “And what about her, is she dead yet?” “Shhhh you two!” replied the girl, “I’m trying to die over here.”
We waited and waited. I was a bit afraid in the beginning. I had heard many stories about “the other side”. A light at the end of the tunnel, heaven and hell, reincarnation, the afterlife… would no longer be a mystery to me. Then I thought of my grandpa who had died a few years ago and everybody seemed to miss him. I felt a little bit guilty for dying without asking my parents first, but it was too late.
The boy next to me fell asleep while the girl laid motionless with her eyes closed, breathing in and out till she also fell asleep. I was unbearably bored and my back was getting sore from the wooden floor. After an hour, I was so disappointed with my failure to die that I decided to get up and walk home.
My parents were surprised to see me so early. “Where are your friends?” asked my dad who had seen all three of us an hour ago in the garden. “They died. So I got bored and came back,” I replied casually to my perplexed family.
