When I look at my nephews and nieces, who are younger to me by a range of ages, I stare at them agog. I fail to comprehend where the gene of ‘being young’ was hidden in me. Or was it completely non-existent.
I see their unreasonable acts of today that they can boast off in future, "You know, I almost dropped my grandpa's TV set because mom refused to buy me a jelly belly candy.", "When I was a kid, I had made me teacher trip over, by extending my feet in her direction, when she was walking past me, during a maths test." "I had dropped a parachute, made by tying the ends of a polythene bag, from the first floor balcony and I wanted to catch it before it touched the ground. As I ran out to run down the stairs, I was making a sharp at the landing, I lost my balance and hit my forehead against a window sill, ripping it open. My mom slapped me. More than the tear which needed 4 stitches, it was mom's slap and look that had stung me critically." And I have no such stories to recite. Zilch.
I don’t know if I have the liberty of blaming it on heredity. I do not know how my mother was, or my dad’s childhood was spent. If there was a common statement that their respective childhoods can be described by, then it would unpredictably be, “They had a difficult childhood”. Whatever innocence and kid-behavior they could modestly boast of was a victim of circumstances, of economic insufficiency, their eyes mirroring a strong yearning of a better life. They were never kids, like the kids of today. I am not referring to the material facilities that are a gift of our disposable incomes, but am looking at the mental make-up, maturity level, the empathetic understanding that they shared with their parents, in times of family travails. No wonder they are still bound to them by the same umbilical cord of affection and a now unfound love of understandingness.
But, I did not have a difficult childhood. I was given all that I asked for. Not that, I demanded execessively. I was frugal in my wants and they were always met. All my desires were satieted. Despite of this, I don't have stories to of my naughty and boisterous childhood. When I asked my mom, "How I was when I was a kid?" She smiled and answered, "Just like the way you are now, all grown up, prim and proper. You hardly slept at night. Not that you were bawling, but cooing playfully and smiling when we looked into your eyes." I posed the same question to my dad, and he said very gravely, "You always pretended to read, though you held the book upside down." When kids are noisy and clamorous, their chilhood is well remembered. Is it because humans have a tendency not to forget bad times.... :)
My boss, once said, "Preeti was never a kid. She just transformed from an infant to an adult."
