YOU REALISE THAT dese days yuh does got to beg children to play outside? Children now does be busy on Snapchat, IG and Facebook but in my time it was marbles, sticky in de mud and tape ball cricket.
Dem does be sharing memes and getting likes, whereas we were sharing ratties and getting burnouts.
I remember I spent a summer looking after my cousin who had chicken pox. Anyhow, summer done and I gone back to school. I sit down in the chair and I feel ah itch so I scratch.
Feel another itch and I scratch again, this time the teacher took one look at me and sent me to the office. After they looked at me dem tell me I had chicken pox and I would be sent home.
Chicken pox? I highly doubted their diagnosis. I more so thought that I din bathe properly, ’cause mummy always uses to say de dirt gine kill me. Anyhow I din object ’cause it meant time to play. Dad drop me straight home and I was given instructions to go inside and rest.
Play
Rest? Man, look, I tek up de basketball and gone outside shooting at an imaginary hoop like if I was Jordan. Gone inside now when the sun dip so that I could bathe and eat.
I tek off my clothes, turn on the shower, start to soap up my skin and realise that the surface upon which my hands passed felt quite similar to Wildey Main Road. I shout fuh mummy hard and when she come she just tell me straight “Dat suit you, I ain’t tell you to come inside and rest?”
Little did I know that sweat was the right ingredient fuh one pox to turn into one hundred and forty-two. If you doubt me, ask me. Needless to say, the next day I was back outside playing again wit de li’l pink cream all over my skin.
Den my brothers went pun an adventure on de family grounds in St Lucy and butt up pun a bull. De bull tek one look at dem and start to charge. One manage to mek it to the house and the other had to seek refuge up a dunks tree.
Don’t ask me how he get up day without a scratch, but my man was up dey pretty, pretty, just waiting. And lemme tell you, he aint get back down as easy as he get up. Every jook he miss gine up, he get gine down. But yet again, de next day we were all back outside. I wouldn’t trade those days for anything!
I am Toni-Ann “Acka” Johnson. Love, peace and Mazola Corn Oil.
• Toni Johnson is an actress versed in the area of comedy. Email: toniann.johnson@gmail.com