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My brother and his bugs
They were different times, not simpler, or better, just different. We used to run all day, covered in mud and bugs, and every treasure we found, either dead shiny scarabs, or filthy dogs, each one of them a treasure we hold. But how in trouble we were every afternoon! since our grandmother, grandmother of me and my brother, grandmother of all. She really did know how to punish kids! Showers were an obligation to enter the house, which, of course, brother hated. Trouble at all! He really liked to run to the nearest river instead of the common showers, indeed, the greatest. Although, he always had leeches all over. Terrible; we were leaders, leaders of the town, and leaders of our gang; most of our yard was ours, our big, lonely jungle. He really liked travelling, we all did. Travelling seemed surreal, at least if you were 6, they were. Mostly, U.S was my favorite place, it looked different, it seemed and even smelled different, Was I crazy, maybe? Back in those, we couldn’t afford plane tickets, so travelling through our new truck was the thing, but we didn’t mind at all. He collected bugs from everywhere, in a little box, such an obsession he had with dead bugs. He collected cockroaches, leeches, ants, any type of bug that he saw. But he had a treasure, he liked this one and he took care of it with his own little life! Since he really liked messing up with ants, by walking and stepping into them, and of course, he always had ant bites which were a huge thing were we lived because they weren’t the normal red tiny ones, they were really big red ants, so yes, the bites hurt the double of a normal one. This is when the special treasured appeared. He had a big scorpion saved up in a bottle, filled with alcohol; he always told us that bottle had magic powers due to the dead scorpion that could give healing wonders, crazy older brother. He saved that Scorpion, until we moved out, he buried him beside one of our many trees. But that was not it, he wanted more. Such a thing… When we arrived, he started saving again cockroaches, but instead of saving them in little boxes, he painted them in blue, because that is his favorite color, my mother was fine with it until she realized he was selling them to all the neighbor kids, Mischief little boy.
Mother didn’t know all of the things we did when were kids, if only she knew, truly little devils we could transform! Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn meant nothing! But isn’t that Childhood memories were about? Childhoods covered in mud, childhoods, filled with stars and friends, candy bars and sunburns, childhoods filled with brother’s bugs!
