That time I insisted the electricity was in the oranges

I was walking through the primary school playground as I left for home today and saw two kids shredding leaves and making different coloured piles, setting them up nicely and childishly, and it just took me straight back to when I was little. Even though it doesn’t feel like it at all, I’m now, technically, an adult. Inside me my memories are affected by the strangeness of time, making them seem as if their events happened either a million years ago or just yesterday when summers were chock-full of playing without a single care in the world. My cousins and I are really close- I couldn’t possibly love them more- and that’s rooted in those many summers we spent together. Summers when we would play ‘Pokemon’, ruining our knees by crawling about, collecting rocks as ‘eggs’ which we stole off each other. Months when we would settle in one particular path of the farm which was framed by trees and made ‘houses’ under particular ones, creating our own little ‘mud village’ which consisted in trotting down the hill to where there were rows and rows of upturned earth where watermelons were planted. We would sieve the dirt, making mud out of it, each choosing a job which consisted of using the mud to make something you could sell to each other. Mine was usually animal accessories (such as little sofas, beds, toys, food), Sara being the most artistic out of all of us and making mud animal (some of which I still have). In the later years Paloma was always the banker, making round drops of money and lending it out to us in order to keep the economy going. As our adults napped after lunch we would either play that or sit on the grass, gameboy in hand, painstakingly connected to each other and racing on Mario kart, the only game I was ever any good at.
We would also have epic games of adventure, each choosing a character (I was always a water witch called Luna, ahaha) and go around the farm with a long list of self-made spells and stories, battling demons and monsters such the ash dragon, personified by a mound of burnt trees and leaves, or Bobby the Vicious, a chained dog which was pretty scary with anybody except me. He died of sunstroke years ago...
In La Manga Laura, Guille and I would be horrible troublemakers, running about harassing the Indian restaurant downstairs by throwing water balloons from the balcony, sticking up ‘CLOSED’ sings on the door as well as crudely drawn pictures of a hand with the middle finger lifted and insulting (this would be the wittiest and funniest thing since farts were invented). We would go about the streets in the evening, pretending to be spies and hiding from everybody, following strangers in an overly dramatic way. I remember this one time, playing some spy or magical game when I pretended to break or infect my leg on the side of the beach and sent Laura to collect some ‘medicinal herbs’ to cure me. As she went off and I moaned in pseudo pain on the floor this gigantic grasshopper flew towards me. My first instinct was to get up and flee the scene immediately but, of course, by leg was infected with some mysterious disease...so I stayed put, staring at the mutant bug in horror and awe until it was frightened away. And when my cousin ran back having dropped the plants, I sent her right back, even though she had to trudged through thorns and nettles because, damn it, I was going to die if she didn’t do something about it!
Not to mention the dramas we made up with our teddies as characters, full of the adult themes of love, deception and death. Or all those lies my bratty, bossy self made up to freak Laura out, such as the one time I convinced her that I was a vampire and would go and kill her mum at night if she didn’t do what I said. AHAHAHA....ah...good times.

I love how annoying and innocent and just childish children are. I left the school playground smiling after an amusing conversation;
“Marina!” a kid called Lauren from Brownies ran towards me, smiling and stopping a few steps away almost shyly. I grinned at her and we exchanged hellos as Grace, another girl from Brownies, ambled up to me with a semi-quiet 'hello Ladybird!'. I smiled at both of them and then Lauren said,
“Is that your I-pod?” pointing at the thing in my hand.
“It’s an MP3 but yeah,” I said, adding the technicality to make conversation.
“Nice I-pod!” she enthused and I laughed at her obvious dismissal to my correction.
“What song are you listening to?” she persisted.
“er..” I squinted at the screen, invisible in the sunlight, “Lady by Regina Spektor.”
She stared at me.
“Weirdo...” she drawled and trotted away. All I could think to do was laugh as Grace shyly shrugged and a teacher smiled at us, nevertheless inching in our direction suspiciously as if I was gonna kidnap the girl or something. Thinking back on it I began laughing as I climbed the hill, only stopping when I realised I would look like a right nutter if anybody saw me giggling alone to myself...
God, I hope I never forget those days, the ones Grace and Lauren are living now. Fuck uni, those have to be the best years of my life. The mooning through car windows, the farts on matches, the riding pillows, the pissing from balconies, the climbing fences and chasing dogs and petty arguments and hysterical laughs....how can you beat that?
You just can’t.