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Free Rein's picture

I grew up in an estate where I was the only girl in a group of over ten boys. The rest of the girls were too young for me to play with. It is not that I couldn’t play with them, but my stern mother kept insisting that I join kids of my age. This was quite hard for me in the first few days but when I became accustomed to them, I could barely remember that I was female. I played all their games, and they actually treated me as one of their own. We could run after each other in the police and robber game, play hide and seek and marble games. I even taught them how to hula-hoop. We went to the same elementary and middle school and learnt in the same class. After school, we could run home and change into our home attire. We could then gather in a nearby land which had been left bare but we had turned it to be ‘our’ field. When I date back to my childhood memories of play, I am filled with unfathomable joy. I can’t help but cherish the golden memories when play was play.