September 21, 2015 - 14:42
Up until the age of six, I lived in an area by the sea in Hong Kong. There was a (what I later found out to be) artificially-constructed beach near our house where there was a path that we would go for 'walks' every weekend on. I say walks, but really it was just my parents pushing me on a stroller. That is, until my brother was born a little less than two years later. By then, my mom highly encouraged me to walk along while she pushed the stroller where my brother was sitting happily and obliviously.
At first, I was understandably upset that I now had to physically exert myself on what had previously been a leisurely ride. However, I soon realized that I had a lot more freedom to explore the world around me. Me being the curious child that I was, I soon started playing around in the sand, with other passersby, and one time I even made it to the water. I treated the beach like my personal playground and I could literally play with anyone or anything. My parents let me explore as long as I didn't endanger myself, which was enough freedom for me.
One day, I decided that I would be adventurous and walk along an elevated portion of the sidewalk that was about two feet off the ground, put there so that people could sit along the path. I climbed up all by myself without my parents noticing, and began to walk along it. I wanted to see how long I could go before my mom found out and pulled me down. I started to run and dance along it, experimenting with all the different ways of walking that I knew. My mom finally realized that I wasn't walking along next to her anymore, and just as she turned around, my foot got caught on a piece of protruding tile. Everything started moving slowly around me, and I still remember my mom's look of panic as I fell off the ledge and onto the hard pavement. I went down face first. My mom hurriedly ran over to me to see if I was okay. Luckily, all I got were a few scratches along my knees and elbows, but I also sustained a wound on my nose-bridge, where it had slammed into the cement. For weeks afterwards, I would look at myself in the mirror and remember the consequences of living on the wild side.
This experience of playing was particularly memorable as I have a lot of pictures from this period where I have a scar on my nose. Now that I think about it, I think that this was the moment that I realized that not everything is possible, and that sometimes having caution is a good thing. I definitely learned a lot from this experience and learned to have fun without putting myself and my mother's feelings in danger.