I started out by living on Kaha street, up until I was two years old, then moved over to Oneawa street up until I was about 7. I hardly remember my Kaha sreet house because I was so young but I can remember some things at my Oneawa Street house. I can picture the house, a mahogany-colored wooden fence surrounded the house. This fence was sturdy, but I bet if one big gust of wind came, that fence would have went down in an instant. When you enter this poorly made, mahogany fence you enter into a partial grass, partial sand like dirt yard. Over to the left was my dad's workout equipment. We would spend days outside listening to songs by Keali'i Reichel, and other Hawaiian artists. He would be working out, and I would either be on my swing, riding my trike, or possibly trying to catch some geckos. Off to the right was a dark shaded area where there was the dog house under a tree, and attached to a branch was my swing. In that doghouse was my dog Nika. For the time that we lived there I was scared to death of my dog, and well any dog, I am not entirely sure why I was so scared of them, I think it was some sort of young childhood experience. Nika was always chained up to her doghouse, for two reasons, because she would run and jump on me, and because she would always dig under and eat up the fence in order to get out. She was not a bad dog at all, just a little rascal at times. I don't remember the inside of the house too well, but I remember one incident that happened on my lanai (porch). My friend Sarah was over, I was about 5 years old and she was around 3. It was a usual time of me bossing her around, telling her to get off my trike, or her to get off my swing, and then me trying to catching geckos. But this time, something happened, I actually caught a gecko. I immediately run and show it to my mom, who is recording the whole time of me playing with Sarah. Of course, Sarah wanted to see it and she said "I wanna see, I wanna see, I wanna put it on my finger." then I replied "Okay Sarah, don't be scared." Then, all of a sudden, the gecko jumped into Sarah's hair. Now normally this wouldn't be that big of a deal, but Sarah's hair was curly and freezy, and my mom referred to it as a rat's nest, so the gecko got caught in it. Sarah was bawling saying "get it out, get it out". Good times. Ha.
Now after I moved out of that house, I moved to Kaneohe Bay drive in Aikahi. This house was nice, and I lived there for a little over ten years, but nothing too exciting (like gecko's gone wild) happened there.
There are so many things I remember about Kailua, and I will probably forget to add a lot, which will probably make me have a part 2 of this later. Here are some things...
Kainalu Elementary School
Now this was my school from kindergarten to 6th grade. Great school, I still talk to many of my friends that I had there. I remember all the fun times I had there with those friends, the most fun I had was playing dodgeball and kickball in 5th grade.
Now us Kainalu kids played dodgeball and kickball like no one else. These were the unofficial sports of the school. Dodgeball, it was like any regular way of playing dodgeball, but we had our moments of great times. Everyone loved to play it even if they hated sports, because those who couldn't throw, could dodge, and I was a great dodger. But one moment that stands out the most was one kid, Lucas, he was the best dodgeball player in our school, he could throw that ball like it was a fastball, and you did not want to even try to catch it because it burned you when it hit you. Most people would dive to escape it. So not even Lucas's competition like Joey, DJ, or Rickey could even catch his throws. But one time, my long time friend Jessica, who wasn't a great player but wasn't bad either caught one of his throws. Now this moment was amazing, because if you know dodgeball, you know that if someone catches a person's throw, then everyone that was taken out by that person is let back into the game. Jessica's catch caused basically her whole team to come back in. Kids rushed back in, and everyone was amazed by that moment.
Then there was kickball. Now we didn't play kickball like the normal kids, where you okay it like baseball, we had a better way of playing. It looked a lot like dodgeball. There are two sides each with a lot of kids, one kid would start it off by kicking it to the other side, then one person would either catch it from the other side, or retrieve it as it fell, then they would kick it back, and this would go over and over again. There was no real competition to this game, but we would sometimes see who could kick it the highest and farthest. There was one kid who dominated above all the rest in that competition, and he was Soloman (Sol), an extremely tall Samoan kid. He kicked a ball and that ball would go higher and farther to the point where you could barely see it, I wouldn't be surprised if he is a kicker on a football team now. Because it went so high and far, it obviously had a lot of power to it. So no one really wanted to get in the way, unless they had a death wish. But we also had this little game where someone would jump in front and stop each other's kicks right as they went up so it they could steal the ball and kick it for themselves. No one dared to try with Sol's kicks. But my friend Sheldon was a crazy little guy. Sheldon was a short Asian kid, that was probably the shortest in our grade. Everyone loved this kid and he did crazy things and got along with everyone. One day, as Sol was about to blast the ball to the other side, little Sheldon flies up into the air and blocks Sol's kick with his back. Everyone was so surprised to see this happen, and also to see that Sheldon didn't go flying because he was so small. He just got up and laughed it all off. We had many crazy times, but that was the most memorable.
I have crazy friends. But they are awesome.
One other thing that I remember about Kainalu is the playground equipment. Now we didn't have the greatest equipment, it was just structures made out of metal poles, like monkey bars, jungle gym's, and other things like it. Now it was a little rusty, and the paint was chipped, but it was sturdy. But one day, they decide to take it all away. This was in about 4th grade. We find out that supposedly someone got hurt and their parents decided to sue. They told us that we would get new equipment that was safer. Of course we liked new things, so we waited. And waited. And waited. It was about 4 years until they put new equipment. So we all graduated from that school and moved onto another. But of course we all wanted to go and see this new equipment, and what we saw, was a small area of cookie cutter plastic slides and other equipment that they began to have in just about every school. Now if we had a small area that would be understandable. But we had a playground bigger than a football field, so they decide to put a small plastic thing right in the center of the field. Can anyone say cheap? Of course all of us kids who had been waiting for years for new equipment were very irritated by this, but we moved on, because we were at a new school.
Despite the bad equipment and cheap budget, Kainalu was a pretty good school, and all of those times that I had in and out of that school were great. But this was just the early years.
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