When we were six, we lived in a fourplex in Bankview. They were constructing an apartment building being our fourplex. Me and my sister and a couple of boys from the apartment above ours would go into the construction site everyday and collect nails. We would put them in an old movie popcorn tub. Neither sets of parents cared that we were playing in an active construction site.
When I was eight, the kids behind our house in Penbrooke Meadows had a go-cart and we were watching them take it for a spin on the street. The go-cart stopped running at some point and they asked us to help them carry it back to their house for them. I remember my sister heaved up the portion of the cart where the hot exposed engine was. Still remember the sizzling sound upon her flesh.
When I was nine, me and my friends were hurling rocks at a bunch of kids with slingshots in a back alley. They were our enemies, probably for no other reason than living on a different street from ours. I hit a kid directly square on the nose. I remember there was blood everywhere. I also remember staying up all night scared about the trouble I was going to get in, especially about the savage whipping my dad was going to give me when he found out. I saw the kid at school a couple of days later with a cast on his nose. I never got into any trouble. Either the kid didn't know who hit him or he knew snitches got stitches.
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