Kids don’t usually have deep thoughts. 

When I was kid, I liked to test which ball would bounce higher and try to guess what's for dinner that night. I grew up in a place where many strange things happened right in front of me that I could never understand. To this day, I’m still trying to make sense of those events throughout my childhood. I learned many things by myself because my parents were always working. I witnessed some things that my mom would definitely cover my eyes for. 

Unless I was getting dropped off at school, I wasn’t allowed past the tall bronze gate because it was “too dangerous”. What my mom didn’t know was that I was the fastest kid on earth and that nobody could catch me even if they tried. I spent a lot of time peeking through the cracks of the gate. I would watch people walk by, watch people buy fruit from the street vendor lady, and eavesdrop conversations. My favorite part was watching the kids play together. 

I didn’t understand why their parents let them go out there but mine didn’t. Sometimes I tried talking to them, but it was hard to make friends with a huge gate in the way. I felt like I was trapped. I wanted to be free like them. 

One day, my dad came back from work extra happy, so he decided to take the whole family out for a nice dinner. We rode down the dangerous street that my parents warned me about. This street was different from the others. The houses were barely standing, the stores looked abandoned, the whole thing looked very gray. As I look out of the window I start to recognize some kids. They were the same ones that were always playing right outside the gate, but they looked weird to me. They looked just like the rest of the people in that street, and then it hit me. 

Until that moment, I never noticed how destroyed their clothes were. I realized that I had never seen their parents. I never noticed how skinny and pale they looked. I never noticed how they never played with toys like me. Most importantly, I didn’t see a single gate. For once in my life, I was so grateful that I wasn’t allowed past the gate, that I could test which ball would bounce higher, and that I could try to guess what's for dinner.