Orangeous Dailies

I thought about something from my younger days. And that thought made me chuckle.

When Michelle (my sis) and I were young, we used to gather in my parents bedroom to play “Sampan”. A sampan is a small chinese wooden boat. We would both carry a mattress over (the sampan), and place it on the floor. The floor represents water. How deep? Very. Rules onboard were simple :

1. If you go overboard, touch the floor with one or both feet, you have at most five seconds to get back on. You’re in deep deep water.

2. Or else… hmm… no idea. You drown? Maybe? So far we’ve had no drowning cases because we were pretty quick and nimble.

3. We are NOT allowed to climb onto our parent’s bed (located right NEXT to the Sampan), unless clear instructions were received from me, the honorable Captain, that we have docked. The bed usually becomes an imaginary market of all sorts, where Michelle would disembark to “buy” stuff and I would ride my motorcycle.

Once the game started, we would load all our stuff onboard that little sampan. Michelle would bring her toy stove and her toy ingredients onboard. And I would bring on the weapons, just in case we were attacked. I had this mini Lego airfield with lots of fighter craft on board. They had UNLIMITED lasers, bombs and health. And oh yes, how could I forget, my Ninja-Turtle grey sword. Our architectural skills were legendary, we placed pillows and bolsters at the side of the sampan to act as railings. The TV across the room provided on-board entertainment for the crew.

My roles on board the ship were :

1. Captain – I steer the ship. And my word is final. Usually we’d travel to Malaysia, sometimes Indonesia.

2. Pilot of the planes – When I was flying the planes around, I was so-called ALLOWED to walk on water, until they landed. And while the planes were firing, I would yell “tew-tew-tew-tew-tew-bish-a-boom” very loudly. No enemy was too difficult for my planes. Sometimes we suffered a few losses (just to be realistic, crashing into mountains..etc), but new planes would almost instantly emerge from the airfield. Everybody would go hungry after the battle, so Michelle had to cook for the Lego men. Funny, because the plastic eggs were nearly 20 times the size of Lego men.

3. Lookout - I would lookout for imaginary enemies, usually the kangaroo soft toy was the main culprit.

4. Motorcyclist – At the marketplace, I would always have a motorcycle to ride on. It was very fast and went “vrooooooooooooom”. Take a pretty stiff pillow, put it horizontally on the bed, grab the pillow between your legs, sit, and lean forward. There, you have a motorcycle. Michelle would sit at the back. And we would turn together, an amazing 30 degrees from the floor. The motorcycle would never skid.

5. Swordsman – Sometimes when the planes were out of fuel, I would leap out with my sword towards the target. Give it few hard smacks on the head. Threat eliminated. After the fight I would be very hungry, and Michelle would cook. And the Lego men would cheer for their new-found hero.

6. Lifeguard – Michelle would sometimes ignore the 5-second rule and I had to reinforce it by counting loudly, yelling, then pulling her back. There, I’m the hero again.

Michelle’s roles were simple :

Cook (always plastic eggs inside the plastic burgers)…

..and cook somemore. Sometimes she played lookout and called “enemy”. Mostly she played with her dolls onboard. If we needed to use the toilet, we would leap from the sampan into the toilet (toilet floor tiles were safe to step on). And we did our business in hurry, because the sampan would leave without us. I remember being yelled at by Mum for pissing all over the toilet seat when I had to return to the sampan in a hurry.

Time passed really fast when we’re playing, and as we grow older, start to miss those days when we were young, stupidly creative and carefree.