April 16, 2022
I was looking for another prompt to have a topic to write about as I don't want to stress my mind thinking about it. Work is kind've exhausting so I'll let prompts save my daily blogging for a while. Besides, there are a plethora of prompts of questions recently that are worth answering.
I came across this article by @LeeART entitled Trying To Remember Those Days and I got caught by the first prompt.
Flashback to a childhood memory
I have a lot of childhood memories, good and bad, but mostly indelible memories of my innocence and naughtiness, lol. You can check these near-death childhood accidents I got involved in back when my curiosity was still at its peak. There is one though that I didn't share here yet, but kind of an embarrassing one, and I felt like, during those times, my family want to disgraced me, lol, or maybe it was just my feeling. If my memory serves me right, I was in prekindergarten by that time.
I was born in the countryside where our neighbors have their own backyards where they could plant vegetables and other sources of daily food. Our backyard, on the other hand, has banana trees and other fruit-bearing trees, but we have no yard for vegetables.
One day, I came across our neighbor's house and saw a lot of sweet potatoes in their yard. An innocent child thought that it was free to harvest sweet potatoes from our neighbor's yard since I always saw my uncle harvesting our fruits in our backyard. In my mind, I was happy that I could give something to my mom and we would have fresh vegetables for dinner. I was happily harvesting some sweet potatoes when our neighbor went out of his house and shouted at me. My instinct told me that I did a wrong act and so I should run away.
I did run away to the upper part of our village and hid inside our kindergarten school. I was so afraid of what our neighbor would do to me and so are my parents once he told them about my thievery. I hid in the same spot for the whole day and until night. I was hesitant to go out of the place as our neighbor might see me.
Then I heard a group of people calling my name and they were holding torches. I still didn't move an inch and my heart even beat faster and my tummy was gurgling because of starvation. I thought they will punish me so I just hid behind the wide plywood. The next thing that happened was, I saw them pulling the plywood and a hiding little girl was revealed.
I was hugging my knees and tears falling on my face. I feared what would happen next but I heard my mother's voice and she took me out of the place. Later I found out that our neighbor confessed to my parents about my innocent thievery and asked for forgiveness for my frivolous act.
Unbeknownst to me, my parents were already worried about my whereabouts and they thought I was lost or abducted by someone as they can't find me anywhere in the village. It was already late at night and so they called other villagers to help them look for me. They came across our kindergarten school and heard a child sobbing. And that's how I was found by them.
Lesson learned?
Know the fact before you assume.
I thought our neighbor would scold me so I ran away.
I thought my parents would disgrace me so I hid and didn't go home.
But the aftermath was different from my expectations and I just made my parents worry much about my sudden disappearance. Since that incident, I didn't step foot into any neighbor's territory anymore, even when I grew up. Unless my mother would order me to run an errand that needed to visit another house. That probably was one of the reasons too that I became an introverted, lol.
In life, we often assume things without knowing the fact, and that sometimes led to misunderstandings and conflicts. We shouldn't make a supposition or base our conclusion on uncertain feelings or thoughts. We rather ask than get caught red-handed or make things complicated.
That's a thought to ponder.
What about you? Have you ever had an experience like this back when you were a kid? Share it below.
Thanks for reading.
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#lifelessons
#childhoodexperience
#freewritershouse
#selfimprovement
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