The Mango Tree

Deviant acts as a child are mostly explained away by the 'We didn't know any better!' line. We tell this to adults with wide eyes and small noses turned up at their big, benevolent faces. But we lie. We do know better and we execute our naughty behaviour with maximum efficiency and the least risk of getting caught.

There is, however, a time when one particular misdeed carried out by myself, my siblings and my cousin, was more obvious than a naked man dancing the cancan at a funeral.

In our defense, there was nothing we could really do to stop ourselves. It was... the perfect plan. Our goal, to reach the juiciest mangoes in the area. Our prize, to feast on the mangoes and relish our victory.

We waited for the afternoon to melt into evening and then into night. The humidity of the Guayaquilanian winter meant that there was hardly any difference in temperature in the dark. It was still sticky, it was still hot. Street lights were an issue, they gave away our position if anyone looked up at the rooftops at the right moment!

My brother led the charge. He's always been a natural leader. My cousin followed closed behind, she moved quickly and hardly made a sound. My little sister was just ahead of me, bounding along and trying not to laugh too much. I stayed behind and watched out for any sign of people spotting us and ruining our fun.

The slated rooftops over most of the houses on the street run over each other and were mostly flat, so clambering over them was easy to say the least. The problem was reaching out just enough to the tree that sprouted in the neighbour's garden and out over the roof tops without being spotted by the same neighbours sitting out, enjoying some down time.

I remember the excitement in dashing across the roof-tops, that sense of complete freedom outside the rule of adults who wouldn't dare cross over the relatively thin slates. We were light, we were agile, we each reached out and took as many mangoes as we could and VICTORY! We scampered back.

We ate the mangoes on the roof-tops, relishing our success, living the moment. As children that's what you do, each moment lived fully, never looking ahead or back. But then we got tired. So we crawled back down to the level of the adults and were faced with their wrath. Apparently they had been alerted by our neighbours that 'your kids are stealing mangoes again.'

Such slander against us! We were shocked. Us climbing the rooftops and stealing mangoes? Why that would be too dangerous and more importantly you told us we weren't allowed...

Unfortunately, it was rather hard to fool our adults. We were covered in dust and our faces were sticky with mango juice, also our stealthy crossing of the roof-tops was rather louder and more obnoxious than we had realised. So we all got the beating of our lives and told, on pain of having all our privileges revoked, never ever to climb those rooftops again.

But those mangoes called to us.

So the next night we laid out a new plan...