More Mischief

My brother Sanyi liked to tease anyone and everyone. He especially enjoyed teasing one of our second cousins, Imre, who was somewhat older than us. His favorite taunt went like this: [Imre gasda- buy a gasba - ott egy diszno rugd - odalba]. Translated to English: Master Imre hide in the woods - there is a pig - beat at its side. Then our cousin Imre would turn very angry and beat up my brother, but nothing would help - not his anger nor the beatings. My brother would not forego his joy of teasing Imre.

We liked to wander around our little town of Nadudvar. My brother Sanyi, who was always our leader, always found some mischievous deeds that we all happily joined in doing. We liked to sit like kings on high orchard fences or garbage dumps. We accepted all the risks that went along with our wild behavior - people sometimes reported us to our parents and we were spanked, but to no avail! Nothing scared us off.

Those happy years with mischievous deeds! There were those long summer Sabbath afternoons when everybody took a nap, but not us kids. Silently we stole out of the house wandering through the marketplace, where we even made our own merry-go-round. When we had enough, we just roamed the streets to the outskirts of Nadudvar. There we claimed we were already in a different city called [Berettyo-ujfalu], where our cousins the Elfenbeins moved some time ago.

© David Muskal, 2001