Birthday Present

When I look at this old black and white picture, I see a face of a smiling boy. A silly face of a little child who enjoys something what is hard to recognize from the picture. My parents picture my silly face, my first birthday present.

I don’t remember too much from it. I was just about five years old and too busy to explore than to remember what I had just explored. It was my birthday, which is unfortunately during summer, so we were visiting my mother’s aunt who lives in Warsaw, an old aunt who planted watermelons and planted one extra big watermelon especially for my birthday. It was the biggest birthday present I’ve ever gotten. Actually it was the biggest watermelon I’ve ever seen. Nothing about the watermelon was especially interesting, but we were leaving, so my mom decided not to cut it yet but take home with us. But my lovely little brother could not wait that long and had to try to bite the watermelon, which was at that time on the table. Bitten “water ball” started to roll. First slowly, then little faster and faster toward my brother, who just watched it rolling. Then “Boom!” the watermelon with enormous force dropped from the table directly on my brother’s foot. It took him quite a while to realize what had happened, and to start to cry. With him I started to cry and scream with an anger of a little child, which as a matter of fact I was. That interested my mother who entered the room to check what happened. Pieces of watermelon on the floor said the whole story and little teeth marks on the watermelon skin showed who was guilty. So that was it, my first huge “wet” present destroyed by the wildest and most dangerous force of the nature – my brother.