I can barely remember my earlier childhood now. However, some memories remain as if they had happened yesterday. I often recall an incident from kindergarten, a mystery I’ve never been able to solve.
It was summer vacation and I remember being very bored. My helper was cleaning the kitchen so she couldn’t play with me. Hours later, she decided to play with me, telling me that we only had fifty minutes. I told her that I wanted to spend those fifty minutes outside since I had been stuck in my house for four hours, desperate for fresh air.
We went to the playground to play on the swings. It was quite fun for a while until I got bored. My helper said that we should head back inside if that was the case. About to agree, I suddenly had a great idea, telling my helper I wanted to stay outside, digging the sand to see if anything ancient might turn up. My helper started to laugh, but said that I only had twenty minutes left.
The sand that covered the sand that covered our playground was dirty, about seven years old. However,at age five, all I knew was the excitement of digging. I pulled my sleeves up and started to dig as fast as I could. Everything was going smoothly until I felt a hard rock in the sand. Curious what it could be, I started digging faster.
After a lot of digging, I finally found a stone like those on Jeju Island, located south of mainland Korea. I thought this to be a fake until I noticed that the stone had holes everywhere. I remembered my father telling me that Jeju had a huge volcano that had erupted about ten years before and that all the stones there were covered with lava. They eventually cooled down but the lava left a permanent mark. This stone definitely had huge marks everywhere. I started running towards my helper to show her the stone. Apparently, she wasn’t as surprised as I was, just nodding her head and telling me that I had to go back in. The last thing I remember is putting the rock back exactly where I had found it.
When I think about this, I wonder where the rock might have gone. I also ask myself if that rock actually did come from Jeju Island. This mystery can never be solved but I definitely will remember this rock.
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