Teenage Fun Poem by Paul Sebastian

Blistering sun, tanned skins
Playing in rain, on a muddy field
Gathering at midnight, we’d sing
Mud-clad bodies, mothers’ dread
Played again, when it rained
Forgetting getting whacked
Teenage was fun!

Fridays end, welcoming weekends
Planned secret trips, told mothers lies
Worm-baits on fishing-line ends
River-silt paled skins, exposed our lies
Repeated mischief, well-used canes
Caught spiders for spider-fights
Caught rainbow-carps in big drains
Perched coiled snakes gave shocking frights
Teenage was nonetheless fun!

Heat-tempered ‘tembusu’ branches made catapults
Armed with stones we’d hit down mangoes
Shoot squirrels, strange visiting coloured birds
Nocturnal bats and flying foxes, made good roasts
Made fancy tailed kites, steadily flew them high
Flew fast-moving fighting-kites with glass-strings
Which neighbourhood kids would sometimes, buy
Earning pocket money to buy comics and playthings
Teenage was certainly fun!

Backwoodsman’s shelters on ‘chicku’ trees,
Tarzan movies gave us some inspiration
There we sat for hours telling our stories
Swinging on high ropes on branches, was excitement
Bamboo bows fired kerosene lit arrows on bee hives
Declaring war on bees that had stung us
Killing snakes with rattan sticks with forked spikes
Chased and bitten by huge Black Alsatians
Climbed tall coconut trees for young coconuts
Precarious descend, bruised chest and shaking knees
Mothers’ beatings didn’t stop our adventure bouts
For we were young, foolish and adventurous teens
What foolishly daring teenage adventures!

Played beyond the set of sun
Hide-and-Seek and Police-and-Thieves
Painful hits by cherry-bullet and pop guns
Playing with girls, hop-scotch and tai-chi
Danced folk dances, sang folk songs
Tin-can telephone whispering chats
Blind folds, broomsticks hit hung gongs
Sat on drawn betelnut-tree leaf mats
Competed playing ‘kounda-koundi’
On palms we spun wooden tops
Played other games, then trendy
Rounders was our favourite sport
Teenage play was fun!

Pockets full of won glass marbles
Or Colonial square one-cent coins
Or coloured cigarette paper boxes
Spun luck wheels, won ice-cream cones
At Convent Fun-Fairs we won prizes
Gardening on Saturday mornings
Before visiting the local libraries
Gave us some odd-job earnings:
Spent on ‘pulut-cendol’ and movies

Practised riding parents’ bicycles
Bruised elbows, knees and toes
To and fro school we cycled
Hurriedly braving the busy roads

Precious treasure of teen-hood!
Sheer joy recalling how it had been!
I would live all over again, if I could
Relive a life of Huckleberry Finn!