It was in the month of May when I was nine years old. My father’s close friend from college time came to visit us with his four children over the long weekend. The day when they arrived was a beautiful sunny day, and my mother drove all of us to a park on the riverside near our house.
As soon as we got off the car, we children immediately started to play. We played hide-and-seek in a pipe maze, we caught tadpoles in toy buckets from a pond, and finally we went to the river to play in the water.
It was a rare occasion for us to play in the river, and we all got absorbed in playing in the water barefoot and scooping up interesting objects from the streambed. We didn’t realize how much time had passed when my mother called out to everyone that it was time for us to drive back home for dinner.
“No!!!! We want to stay here more!”
We children strongly protested. After some minutes, my mother repeated.
“Let’s slowly head back home, my loves. You must be hungry.”
“No!!! We are not hungry!”
We children protested again. As I protested, I slipped on a stone and fell in the water. My bottom was drenched and suddenly it was no longer fun to continue playing with a wet bottom.
“Well, I don’t mind going back home.”
I said. Then the youngest girl, who was about six at the time, shouted.
“No, I won’t go back home yet!”
As she said it, she too slipped on a stone and fell on her bottom, wetting her clothes. No sooner than her bottom touched the water, we heard her say
“Oh, let’s go home.”
I don’t remember what others said after that. But after two of us fell in the water and expressed the wish to go home, a collective decision was made to head back home. After all, we still had three more days to explore and play together.