Synopsis
I had the fortune of spending my childhood in a small Brazilian town, Monlevade, and in Luxembourg. Our experiences had a unique flavor, enabled by our freedom and explorations. This little book is a testament to this magic time. It is by no means meant to be a memoir. Memoirs often portray the heroic past of a person. The small events are left out in order to carve, as if in marble, a statue that aggrandizes the accomplishments. My inspiration for this much more modest book comes from Roald Dahl, whose fascinating books I read to my granddaughters until they outgrew the stories. His book ‘Boy’ caused a deep impression in me and I realized that his sentence about life being composed of a great number of small incidents and a small number of great ones has great depth.
So, I built a semblance of his yellow house in my backyard and proceeded to write the accounts of my childhood, mixing funny, happy, and not so happy stories. Children have a special place in life, and we often forget about their actions and aspirations in our quest for serious, grownup activities. I hope that it will entertain you for a few hours and make you forget the stress of grownup life. Don’t take the actions of these little boys too seriously. Children have a special way of looking at life. Their pranks are the result of their curiosity and creativity. They look at adults and cannot comprehend fully their behavior. When we leave childhood, we step into the adult world, more stressed and less funny. This book will not cross this Rubicon.