Chapter TWO

 

Chapter TWO

 

Our house took about nine months to build, and when the time came to move in, my life changed. It would never be the same, living in a big house, out of the city, with the view of a smallish mountain, better described as a big hill. The house was shaped in an ‘H,’ the left ‘leg’ was a long room, divided into the living room and kitchen. Half of the right ‘leg’ was a big room shared by me and my two sisters. The other half was divided into sections, my parents’ room and the bathroom. The little connection between the two ‘legs’ was our quite small ‘hallway’, where the front door was. Because our house had a thatch roof, it was very high, and this in turn, meant we could put up lofts. Lofts are like a wooden floor, elevated above the rest of your house, for living or storage purposes, in this case, both. We built in three lofts, two in my room, and one above the kitchen, as my mom’s photography studio.

At the time, Nina was three, Leila was seven, and I was nine, and ironically this happened to be our address, plot 379. Now I’d like to say that all our ages added and then again multiplied, if dialled on a phone would be our home number. But of course that would be a lie. But astonishingly, there is nothing else astonishing, in which case you either laughed because of this useless piece of writing, or you are thinking “pathetic.”

 

Now, to move on to the more exciting aspects of my life living on the plot. Most of the major event of my life happened on that plot. We did all kind of stuff and saw so many UFCCRC’s (Unidentified Flying Crawling Climbing Running Creatures). In comparison life in the city was, just plainly said, boring to me. Just a short walk from our house, through the thick brown grass and very itchy spikes that happily penetrate your clothing to uncontrollably irritate your skin which drove you to the verge of destruction. Just a short daring walk was a small river, surrounded by a small wood. So my life was filled with rather small things, but with an imagination like mine, and a logic that wasn’t to be found in the galaxy when I needed it, everything in my life was huge and adventurous. Going to the river was a very brave thing to do, and only a few friends I nominated ‘brave’ enough would go down with me. Usually this meant gearing up on all sorts of survival equipment. In my kit I included a compass, my pocket knife, an old scope, and sticks of various sizes, string, two golf balls, and a few other very unnecessary objects. But of course all of these things had uses; the golf ball could be thrown at any beast that would attempt to attack; the scope to scout out any civilisation within a few meters; the string to tie up the robbers that stole our radio last year and all sorts of other things. For all we knew, we could have been out there for a very long time, getting lost, hunting for our own food, setting a campsite. But unfortunately this never happened, and we always returned safely, well, fairly safely, for we still had to get past our vicious, bloodthirsty guard dogs. And of course this never stopped us either because they were two loving Richbacks, one was a mother, and the other her son. So as a boy with a very big imagination we never came back without a story, which most of the time was a much exaggerated attempt to get my parents interested in my small daring adventures.

 

Daring expeditions into the unknown wilderness were not the only highlighted events that enriched my life there. There were a lot of mountain biking track close by and that, of course, is why my life revolves around bikes. We had regular family outing where we would go ride together, not so far, but which seemed like a cross country race at my age. I remember the first time I cycled that long distance endurance trip to some friends; house with my mom. I was so proud, and I couldn’t believe the progress we had made, and the distance between where I was and where we started. That’s when I knew I am a mountain biker. Thinking back, it was only 8 km on a dirt road, but a big achievement to me. There was a 1 km road between our house, and the main entrance gate that lead to the road. This road connected all the plots on our ‘estate’, consisting of about ten plots. Each consisted of a piece of land about 10 acres big. This road was a notorious bike playground, specifically at the very steep slope, once again right at the entrance of our plot. This time the angle of the downhill is very steep, unless I am still to develop yet more mature bravery to laugh at myself a while from now.  There was a plot further down the road, occupied by the unfortunate residency of a fat, grumpy man. The quite likely event of being confronted by this man, would usually lead to a very uncomfortable situation, which can almost be related to the sensation one has after wetting your pants. Thus you do everything to avoid this man, and the evil memories that so unpleasantly corrupt your mind. So, one day my mom told me to ignore him, and carry on riding if he started shouting at us again. That day soon came, and I solemnly carried on riding with my two sisters. I probably looked calm, as we carried on riding, but I had the concealed fear of a small boy, confronted with the green monster that so frequently appears in your nightmares. I heard him getting angrier as he kept on shouting louder, ‘and this for simply riding on our community road’, I thought to myself. Soon he couldn’t handle himself anymore, and like an obese immature baby, attitude and all he climbed in his pick-up truck and raced after us. My sisters were petrified, and ran along home, leaving the bikes for me of course, and soon he caught up with me. What happened next can only be described by me, as a valiant attempt to avoid and rescue the unfortunate from this grumpy lunatic. After he left, I let out a sigh of relieve, lowering my pellet gun from the window sill. You never know what species like these can do, especially when in a verbal conflict against my mom. Whatever it was, he would have gotten an air-gun pellet against his head.

 

Not many such exciting incidents happened in my life. I think the worst any person has done to me, besides my parents, is my maths teacher pulling my ears because I wrote the date in the wrong context in one lesson. That was a practically frightening event, considering it was third day in school, ever. I was about 12 years old. This is because I homeschooled for the previous few years of my life, and I wanted to know what school was like. And that year quite did it for me. I still home school, if you were wondering.