Narrative 2

I remember the military parade at the top of the hill, on 1st Avenue, near the former Igloo, the ice cream counter. I was two years old.

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I remember around three, four years old, being at the cabin of a friend, who lived the neighboring house of mine, and trying to look through a hole, below the outhouse, where my friend had gone to the toilet, to see his booty!

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I remember, also, squabbling with a friend and then running to catch him up, when he wanted to leave, angry, to apologise and when I got out of the house, I stumble on the threshold, which was, like, one and a half-inch thick, and although I tried to hang on to the door frame, I fell on the corner of a metal tank, which was upside down, that mom used to soak the linen in, and I split open my right eyebrow and the skin over my nose. I remember crying a lot, blood flowing like water on my face and my mother carrying me in her arms to daddy's big old truck. Then dad in turn carrying me in his arms up the hospital’s staircases instead of waiting for the elevator which was too long to come.

(It’s strange, but I can feel, right at this moment, how they must have been worried for me I’d lose my eye or I’d die. Twenty years later, maybe they would wish I die, after all…)

I remember the doctor putting a sheet over my head, with only one hole for my eye. I remember the needle entering in and out of my skin. I had the feeling that the hand of the doctor was entering along with the needle and going in and out of my head. I remember, later, sitting on our stairs outside the house, my friends coming to see me, and feeling almost proud to show them my stitches. I was about four, five years old.