The slides

For 27 years I have been living in the same house facing a playground. I love that playground, my brother and used to play together when we were small. All of the playground equipment, I love the swing and the slide the most.


The slide was made of steel with wood as the penggelungsur. It was a fine slide because it will make you slide so fast that you could hear the wind at your ears, plus it's a high slide, well high enough for kids. Being beruk, I love to slide not only hanya beraksi duduk tetapi membuat aksi superman juga. Dengan memakai seluar katuk, menelentangkan diri atas slides sambil kepala kebawah dan tolaklah dengan kaki. Sungguh terasa hebat diwaktu itu. We also like to play choo choo train on the slides but if the train is too long tak best sangat sebab skejap je dah sampai.


Now one day, like any other evening my brother and I went to the playground and I told him "cepat, lumba siapa sampai gelongsor dulu, siapa lambat dia anak [aku keji nak tulis benda ni]".


Maka dari jauh kelihatan dua orang budak berlari-lari sambil menarik baju sesame sendiri sebab masing-masing nak sampai dulu.


I can't really remember who get there first but I remembered playing I-want-to-slide-first and continuing to pull and push each other. We were standing on the slide that that and my brother pushed me as a continual to our pushing game. Least that he know, his push made me fall from the slide, to the ground.


Did I let him stay there and not join the fun? Of course not. Dengan tangan sekecil lidi, aku menarik bajunya which were initially to find a place to hold but he followed me down, to the ground.


And he fall on me.


Then I realized, something is wrong with my hand. Apsal siku aku lain macam je ni? Apasal macam ada tulang terkeluar?I showed my hand to the kakak [maid] and she said "ala sikit je tu, dah pegi main balik" and continued talking to her mates. I didn't continue to play coz it was excruciating but went to show it to my mum. When I showed it to her dengan gelepuran sekelip mata aku telah berada di hospital.


The hospital was nothing but scary. But the scary-est part was during the first night, a nurse walked to me with a tray full of injection dengan pelbagai size. Ada injection kecik, ada yang besar and ada yang bapak besar. Somehow I was convinced that the nurse would took out the biggest injection and stab it to my butt. Dan dengan drama queennya aku meronta-ronta ketakutan dangan linangan air mata dimana akhirnya nurse itu cuma mahu bagi aku makan ubat sahaja.Hehe.


Eventually I got my hand casted. If I am old enough that time, mungkin aku boleh berlagak ko-ol menconteng simen itu macam dalam cerita ali setan tapi apalah yang reti dibuat oleh budak tadika yang hanya pergi ke tadika islam [ye aku pegi tadika islam, heh]


Despite ending with a tangan that can't be straighten properly now, I still love the slides, and the swings and whatever they used to offer. But what made me sad now, most of the equipment were not there anymore.


The other day, when I went for a walk to the kedai to buy ice creams, I realized how much I missed sliding down the slides yet, the wooden and steel made slide was no where to be seen. Only plastic slide stood there, they even changed the swing which were used to made also from tyres and wooden seat and now they replaced it to some kind of rubber materials that when you sit on them, the will squashed your butt, too bad if you have a big butt [like me :(]. That made me wonder.


Why? It was fun. And even to think of it still make me smile until today.


Perhaps it is because of safety reasons but I feel sorry for today kids because they have less fun than I used to.