The First Thing

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The first things I remember were the cries and laughs of the other children. The shouting and so many different voices. Songs were sung through the day, stories were told at night.
I remember one time, when I was 5, we went on a picnic at the park. We took some bread to feed the ducks by the lake, and I fell in the water! I was freezing cold for the rest of the journey. It was a winters noon, and jack frost had visited over night. I think he came with the tooth fairy that night, as a sparkling £2 coin was found under my pillow the next morning. I believed all of that then...... I soon grew out of it, after the big kids told me everything. They even recorded our care workers, Steve and Winnie, putting money under my pillow... They told me the tooth fairy had called and said she was busy so they had to help her out. But oh well.
At the care home, we were all a big family. We supported each other, as families do, we laughed together, cried together, went out together... Just like families. We would all get emotional sometimes, as we missed having a family. Well, a real blood related family but I was upset less often, because I hadn't actually experienced having a family, so the whole care situation was just normal. It was just what I had grown up knowing and living with.

Another one of the first things i remember was Billy. Billy Smith. He was a few years older than me, and he looked after me. Then when he turned 18, he moved out. He said he would keep in touch, they always say that. He did keep his word for around a month or two, but 10 years on, haven't heard a thing.
I still miss him sometimes, his mad stories about how he went roller skating in the jungle, or how he survived 5 days in the wild with only a pair of scissors, a paper bag, and a mars bar. And how, at Christmas, he would sing the carols so well, that he would stand in the middle of the street, and people would through flowers and money at him. Even though it was just a story, he still constantly groaned about how he couldn't do 'oat' with flowers... No use, are they to me... Bloomin flowers. What can you do with flowers. Sell them, he would. Only a few quid though, he mumbled. Money would've been better. His mind was always somewhere else... Probably moaning about flowers, or roller skating in the wild West. 'Such imaginative thinking' his teachers would say. When he picked me up from playschool I would ask him where he's been today. Those were the good times.
I also remember mine, Rosie's, Whiz's (William) and Billy's hideout. We had our very own tree. We would walk into the woods behind our garden, and walk past 4 oak trees, past the willow tree and a left onto the main path, which led up to our den. We had sneaked blankets and cushions out of our rooms to here, and we knew it was save because we conducted an investigation. One of us four would go out to woods every morning and place a video camera in the depths on the grass, completely out of site. Every night, we went to collect it and watched the footage of the day. Not one person walked through the woods. Even after 13 years, I still haven't seen anyone go through there, apart from Kevin, the window cleaner, who has to go part way down to clean the side windows.

If I had a time machine, then I would so go back to those times. They were the best days of my life. And who said care kids weren't as good off as everyone else??

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