My household was slightly larger than average. Well, when my neighbors had on average six or seven children, we were quite on the smaller side. However, when talking about the ‘modern’ world where parents only had one or two children, then we were at the very least an average household since I had three siblings.

The oldest one of us all was the household’s biggest bully (and ultimate savior as well), my older sister Grace. Younger than her by a year is Daniel, followed by me with a four years gap. I also have a younger brother that’s five years younger than me but he’s not relevant.

Our house was pretty small, consisting of a kitchen, a living room, one bathroom and two bedrooms. Well, there was a master bedroom as well that belonged to my parents that had its own bathroom and TV. Back then, all we felt was envy towards them.

The two bedrooms were relatively the same size, one belonged to the boys while the other to the girl. As you can guess, I wasn’t very happy with that arrangement. Oh, and between the two rooms, there lies our one bathroom. You can bet your ass someone would usually eat something bad and then we’ll all suffer from the consequences.

Anyways, our room was a mess to say the least. We had three beds in our room, a bed for every boy. But because our room couldn’t actually fit three beds, we had to get rid of our door to make space for the third bed or otherwise the door would be permanently closed and that would just be counterproductive.

Some of you would say “Hey why didn’t you get bunk beds?”

And my answer to that is I don’t know. Maybe my parents were afraid we’ll roll from the top to the ground? But then again, they weren’t really that keen on safety. You see, in a rural village, especially in a slightly poor family, a child-proof house isn’t a priority. Or more like, the thought never even occurred to my parents.

What came with siblings is sibling rivalry. Daniels and I never got along, ever. We’d always fight. We had our times of ceasefire, but those never lasted. It probably started from something as simple as competing for our parent’s attention.

So one day, my dad had a brilliant idea. He decided to have us compete to see who was the fastest between the two of us, as he wanted us to go into their bedroom and grab his phone for a piece of gum. When he gave the “Go”, I ran as fast as possible. His indestructible Nokia phone was on top of an antique table, and that antique table had sharp edges.

I had a slight lead in the race, but my older brother wouldn’t go down without a fight. As we neared the table, and seeing the prize slowly vanishing from his grasps, he extended his hands and pushed. I stumbled as I faced the edge of the table. It all went into slow motion, as my life flashed through my eyes. I closed my eyes as tears threatened to escape, ducked down with the only this thought in mind. “I won’t get that piece of gum…”

Me ducking down probably saved me an eye. Because the sharp edge went into my left eyebrow, and I still have that scar up to this day. After a quick visit to the emergency room, my parents decided to childproof our house by taping small cushions to every slightly pointed edge.

So now that we’re done with the depressing set-up, let’s move right into the action. That injury opened up a lot of possibilities. My dad refused to have it stitched, so he had them administer first aid and he’d just take care of cleaning the wound on a daily basis until it healed up.

Because of that, all I had was to cover my eyebrow to not let it breathe the atmosphere--and I did that very magnificently. For about a month, I transformed into a pirate. I was in first or second grade when that happened, and everyone would play along with me. Teachers would call me “Captain” in roll call, my fellow students would give me worshiping glances as they too wished they could rock an eyepatch.

At home, I’d loot my brother of his possessions. You really looked forward to eating ice cream? Too bad! It’s mine now! Arrr! And he couldn’t do anything about it. Pretty soon, I had my own pirate crew and we’d go around the neighborhood to play games. We put our own twist to cops and criminals, we’d ride sandstorms with our fleet of bicycles and just have general fun.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

One of the things we also enjoyed was playing pranks. Children would usually go to the store to buy snacks on their own, and upon entering the store some would leave their bicycle unattended. They wouldn’t even lock it up. So Dave, who was one of my zealots, had the bright idea to steal another kid’s bicycle.

The bicycle he stole belonged to one of our crew, so I just nodded to the idea. I mean, as soon as he lost his bicycle, won’t he come to us to help him solve the problem? At that point, we’d just give him back his bicycle and say ‘We caught someone with it, so we beat him up and got it back’ and have him fall even more for us. It was simply flawless, and I couldn’t help but be proud of Dave for thinking of ways to increase these people’s loyalty towards me.

What I didn’t take into consideration, however, is the fact that he did not run to me, but ran to his dad for help. His dad hopped into his car and went to patrol the streets, and coincidentally saw me on my bike and Dave on a bicycle suspiciously similar to the one he was looking for. For some reason however, he didn’t seem to recognize us.

The father rolled down his window and asked us from afar to stay still. We knew something was wrong, so Dave and I immediately peddled into a tight alley that a car can’t go through. The father was forced to drive around, and that started down a real chase down. We probably could’ve dealt with it if we left the bicycle somewhere and walked away, but we didn’t think of that at all. All we thought of was how to lose the father.

The father, after driving around and realizing that he lost us, decided to go down from his car and walk into the alley. Sensing his hurried footsteps, Dave and I got out the way we went in and peddled as fast as possible. From behind, we heard the father shouting “If you don’t get here now I’ll call the cops on you all!”

Dave immediately started breaking down, saying how he’s going to die in jail. How he’ll never eat candy anymore, and how much he’ll miss his PlayStation. And because of that, I started to tear up as well as I thought of what’ll happen eventually. I thought of the countless times I’ve been told that if I were to ever go to jail, to never drop the soap, despite not knowing why I should not drop the soap. I mean what if it was too slippery and just went down on its own? Should I just leave it be and grab a brand new soap?

The mere thought of that made my eyes start to tear up as well, and because I was wearing an eyepatch, the tears pretty much blocked my vision. And just like that, I ran over a big rock that I couldn’t see and lost control of the bike, tumbling down and scraping my knee.

Whether it was the thought of going to jail or the thought pain that was running through my leg, I really started crying my eyes out. Thinking back, I was really a crybaby huh. The father then caught up to us, but was surprisingly kind. Unlike his previous stern behavior, he first soothed us and asked us why we did what we did. He still didn’t acknowledge us however, which probably either added to my relief or made me cry even more.

We explained everything incoherently to him while still crying, and he just nodded. He then took us to his car, and the little kid we stole the bicycle from was sitting in the backseat. He then told us to apologize to him, and that we wouldn’t do it again, and he’ll let us off. We did just that.

I told myself that if I were to grow up, I’d be just like him. But, well, that sentiment disappeared pretty quickly along the way. Only a question remained in my mind, however. Our little group has had dinner at their house before, so there’s no way he didn’t recognize us. But why did he act as if we were meeting for the first time?