Hive Creative Contest - A Small God Under the Oak Tree

I grew up in a very humble neighborhood in Maracaibo as the youngest of nine brothers. The house where I lived had a very wide sand patio with many trees, but there was a king tree, a huge and leafy oak tree that stood above all the others. Under the shade of that oak, I played a lot with my sister and with my friends, but also alone, and it is precisely these solitary games that I want to remember in this writing.

I never had many toys, with such a large family my mom had other priorities, but what I did have was a great imagination. I remember that I built a city with my own hands, the roads were grooves in the sand and along it, I nailed wooden sticks to simulate light poles, the electrical wiring were thin ropes that tied from stick to stick; the buildings and the houses were bricks of different sizes, ah, and another thing: the trees were small plants that I took from the garden and then planted in my small city.

I also made lakes and dams, digging holes in the earth that I filled with water; As I had very few plastic soldiers, the population was completed with people represented by stones that were more or less human in shape, —well… at least that was what I thought. Toy cars traveled on the road, and accidents and fights sometimes happened. I remember once I made a cardboard house and set it on fire to simulate a fire, the idea was that the firefighters put out the fire but I miscalculated because the water in a cup was not enough and the flames consumed the entire house, at least the inhabitants were saved, they were not burned, they were made of stone.

In that city I was God, I could do whatever I wanted, I spent hours and hours playing, dirtying myself with mud, giving free rein to my imagination and having fun under the branches and leaves of that unforgettable oak.

When we are children, expensive toys are not necessary to play, the imagination allows us to create imaginary worlds with any object that amuses us and makes us very happy.