Learn Spanish with: A white house, 3 children and 30 mud balls
There were 3 of us, we had just come from playing football on a field at the school and there we saw the perfect misdeed. They were whitewashing a wall with lime. It wasn't going to last long.
I grew up in a neighbourhood in a small town south of Madrid, we were poor but very happy. The streets were full of children and we never lacked for games and mischief. It is inevitable to compare with the children I see in Hong Kong who lack the spark that only the street gives you, the hitting, the falling, the running, the throwing stones. ..... I am not saying that mine was better, far from it, the children here don't have what I had and I didn't have what these children have, languages, education and music. I would have liked it better myself!
I'll tell you the story.
At that time we played football every day, football was quite cheap because with one ball we played for 20 people for hours. Then we would go to the fountain to drink water and then go home for dinner and it was on this last trip that we painted Mr. García's house with mud, it was a perfect misdeed.
Mr. García's house was halfway between where we played football and Calle Postas, which is the street where the children lived, and that day instead of all 20 of us going together, for whatever reason I can't remember, we split up, and I went with my brother Carlos and David ¨El Culebra¨. A funny gang of gangsters
On the way home we saw how Mr. García's sons were picking up the ladder, the brushes, the buckets and the paint, they had been whitewashing the house and it had turned out very shiny. Those sons would have been about 30 years old at the time, we would have been 8 to 10.
It was El Culebra who came up with the idea and both my brother and I didn't say no, we would laugh a lot, we knew it.
Once Mr. García's sons had packed up and gone into the house, we ¨¨three musketeers¨ went to the work site opposite to prepare our weapons. We started to make mud and balls. About 10 per head.
We decided to wait until it got dark so as not to be seen and we made it clear that we all had to throw all the balls. It wouldn't take us more than 15 seconds to fill Mr. Garcia's white walls with children's shrapnel. Then we would do the usual, take off our shirts and run off in any direction other than our own to throw off anyone who might see us.
The time came, we were nervous but ready. We put the balls in an empty cement sack. We had to get 10-15 metres closer but it didn't matter, it was going to be very fast.
We threw, took off our shirts and ran out of there with a mixture of fear and adrenaline laughter that made us feel unreachable. We were proud of our misdeed. Very much so.
The next morning we had to stop by Mr. García's house to go to school. Mrs. Angelines, a couple of other neighbours and one of Mr. García's sons were there, very indignant. They had been whitewashing the walls of the house all day and the next morning the façade was covered in mud. There was evidence but no culprits
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