My childhood/ mi niñez/ taa lu

     At the time of growing up, I did not have any idea whether things were good or not. It was a typical life for a vast majority of us children in this small town of Mixtepec. As any other indigenous culture, we hardly had any nice clothes to wear. I remembered wearing a set of pants what was cut out like a short. It probably was my older brother’s pants and when they grew up on it, it became material for the younger siblings. These semi-pants hardly covered my knees. I cannot recall how long it last it, but it was a long time. It must have been the only pants I had because I remembered wearing it every single day. This was when I started school. My most vivid memory was going to school with this unique style pants. Since it did not pass my knee cup, it was the easiest way to cross the river. I had no shoes or huaraches, I just when into the water like nothing. My brothers had to stop for a moment and then fold their pants and merged into the current. I was already waiting on the other side when they just step into the water. For whatever reason, this adventure of always been the first one to pass to the other side, made me feel proud. I was happy with whatever I had. Furthermore, I enjoyed those days when my brothers, friends and I went to swim into the river. We would spend hours swimming and making panales on the sand. We may have been the only ones with this childish entertainment behavior.

          My next memory in line is the one having to race with each other on the top of the hill near the house. We will gather there during the day when our cattle, chicken and other domestic animals were pasturing. I believe we did this racing almost every day. It did not matter who won yesterday, today was another day and that was the important thing in our minds. I think neither one of us had anything to wear on our feet. We were barefoot but this was not an issue because we did not know that on other societies, people actually had things to wear. Our feet were numb or used to, whatever sounds better, for having to walk everyday and everywhere barefoot. Even those gravels did not bother us. We will feel them under our feet, but it was just a small piece of larger rocks. Racing was fun and having not shoes did not stop us.

          However, there was a memory not so memorable. There were occasions that my barefoot feet would find a rock on the uneven trails. Sometimes, one or two toenails could come out of its location. We would cry for either a short time or maybe the whole day. I remembered my parents tied my toes with this leftover string from the firecracker making us believed that it was for good luck and it will protect our toes from tipping over a rock.