Carefree Childhood

We lived in Nadudvar around four years. Some of my memories of those years stand out very clearly in my mind till this very day. As I look back at my childhood years, I can say that they were happy worry-free years of full freedom for a child between the early years of 2-6 (after that we moved again to another town(.

I have some nice and some sad memories. Mostly I grew up with my two brothers and three boy cousins. They were my closest friends and my constant companions. Sometimes we played with a gentile neighbor boy also about our age, George O-Nagy.

With my little band, we liked to roam around in the little town of Nadudvar from early morning till twilight. My elder brother Sanyi was our leader, and we followed his orders - whatever his witty mind conjured up. One day he suddenly decided that we should visit our grandmother Roza, who lives far away in the big city of Gyor. So we went to the train station, where the station manager asked us what we were looking for. We told him proudly that we wanted to go to Gyor to visit our grandmother. He told us we were already there, "so now kids, go home fast". That we did, when we suddenly lost our way home, until I finally found the right direction.

We did not have any toys to play with, so we invented things with which to enjoy ourselves during our free time - that we had plenty of at this time!

Here I went to a kindergarten that I liked. Our teacher was a nice lady but I don't recall any friends there. I just remember one day a little boy, Sanyi Gold, wrongly reported me to the teacher and I had to stay in a corner for a short time as a punishment. I felt very humiliated and never spoke to him again.

© David Muskal, 2001