Childhood+Memories

“Pleeeaasee!” I begged.
 * Sledding on the Ural River, by Ben **

“No, you know the tradition, no sledding on the river until we see ice fishermen and cars on it,” explained Mum.

My sisters and I stared longingly at the frozen Ural river fogging up the window. It seemed like it was teasing us with its freshly fallen snow like icing sugar and all of the kids screaming and playing on it merrily. Even though several families had the same rule as us, it was still as antagonising as ever.

After 30 minutes of staring out the window, my Mum finally told us to go outside and play. Guess where, NOT ON THE RIVER! I went to call on some of my friends and only one of them could come, Max. We were heading to my house when we saw it. I ran screaming to my house from excitement only thinking one thing: I’m gonna go sledding! I’m gonna go sledding!

“Muuuummmmmmmm! Lets go sledding!” A cement truck was prowling along on top of the Ural River. A cement truck!That was even heavier than a car!

The sound of the sled gliding down the river bank was followed by a soft thud of landing in a mound of snow. “This, is…AWESOME!!!” I exclaimed.

Everybody was there for more than 4 hours, repetitively going up and down the riverbank. Luckily, all of the ice fishermen and cars were about half a mile down the river, so there were no holes where we were playing. A few times a snowball fight broke out, but all of them were pretty short.

All of the smiles were wiped away from our faces as we realized that it was almost time to go. You may think that a sunset is a beautiful thing, like a plump orange fading away in a sea of rose petals, but for a kid it’s the worst thing to see in a day. A sunset indicates the end of a day, the end of play.

“Alright, it’s time to go.”, sighed my Mum, for there was to be immediate complaining. But soon we were at home, warm, safe, and cozy. While drinking our hot chocolate, the sound of slurping was pleasing and intoxicating to the ear. Since the end of the day was nigh, I had to go to bed. I fell asleep with pleasant dreams. I dreamed of freshly fallen snow on top of a crisp layer of ice, and for some reason a tap dancing penguin.

** What's in That Sandwich? by Desoraya ** “Can you make another sandwich for me tomorrow?” Ben asked as he threw his pack lunch away. I turned to face Dao. The creepy smiles appeared on our faces, then we turned to face Ben who was waiting for an answer.

“Sure.” I opened the fridge and brought out bread, ham, cheese, and butter. Dao prepared the lunch box, knife and other stuff.

“Don’t forget that we have to make sandwiches for Ben,” Dao reminded me. I smiled and brought out another loaf of bread from the fridge.

“I have a great idea,” I said and brought out a lemon, pepper, salt, and sugar. I picked up the knife and scooped up a bunch of butter. I spread out all the butter and the bread and started to put some pepper, salt, and sugar in.

“What are you doing?” Dao asked and looked at me putting everything inside the sandwiches.

“Come on! This is going to be fun!” I said.

“Okay,” she nodded and came to help. After we put a lot of butter inside the sandwich, we put lemon, salt, and sugar in it. Then we put ham and cheese in too so the sandwich would look normal.

“Hi, Dennis,” I said, as I sat down on the ground and patted the cat’s head. I looked at Dennis walking to his food bowl. A creepy smile appeared on my face again. Then I did something that made Dao almost throw up.

“Tomorrow is going to be awesome,” I said with a creepy smile.

Lunch finally came. We unpacked our lunch just like every day. But Ben didn’t appear yet. Dao and I looked around. //Where is he? I thought//. Then I spoke up. “Where is Ben?” I asked, because I already brought his sandwiches out from the box and the smell was really bad. I closed the lid of the box again.

“Mrs. Joe asked him to stay after class because he didn’t pay attention in class,” Maddie told us as she started to eat her sandwiches. Just then, we heard the door slide open and Ben walked in.

“Here are your sandwiches,” I said and gave him the lunch box. Maddie already knew about the sandwiches because we already told her before Ben came. We all smiled at Ben.

“What are you guys smiling for?” Ben says and opened the lid. He stays stilled for a moment and slowly picked up the sandwiches inside. He opened the sandwiches a little bit.

“Pepper?” Dao and I started to get panicked when Ben looked at us with a questioning eyes.

“Well, we thought that you might like pepper so we put some in…just a little bit not that much,” I smiled after finished the sentence. Dao nodded like she agreed with me what I’d said.

“That’s great! I love pepper, thank you so much guys, I owe you one,” Ben said and kept judging the sandwiches. He slowly took a bite. Dao, Maddie, and I stared at him.

“What are you guys looking at?” Ben lowered his sandwich and looked at us. //Damn! That was really close, we thought//.

“Oh! We just…um...”

“We just wanted to know if the sandwich was good or not,” Maddie continued Dao's sentence.

“You guys are acting weird today.”

“Really?! Everything is fine. Eat! Quickly! I want to know if it's good or not!” I said. Ben nodded and finally, he took a bite. His face turned weird.

At last he ran through the room to the trash can and spit out all the sandwich in his mouth. We all laughed. I really couldn’t hold my laughter anymore.

“What was that?!?!” he shouted out and cleaned his mouth with a glass of water.

“It’s a sandwich,” Dao said and kept laughing.

“What’s in there?!” Ben asked again and threw all the sandwich pieces from the box into the trash can. He brought a cup of water to the table and looked at us angrily. We all tried to hold our laughter.

“You really don’t want to know that,” I said and tried to stop laughing. We all looked at each other, and tried to make a decision about whether to tell him or not.

Then Dao started to talk. “There’s just pepper, salt, lemon, and sugar.”

I knew that Dao wouldn’t say that there was something else in the sandwich too. So I kept quiet until Ben asked.

“No, it’s not just that. There was also a crunchy stuff in it to. What was that? It has a disgusting taste,” Ben said and took another drink to clear his mouth and throat. We started to smile again.

“It’s was…um…” Dao tried to say it out, but it already took her thirty seconds now.

“It’s cat food” I finally said, with laughed.