True life story...

[AbuHossam]

When I was about eight, the trendiest play among kids in my neighbourhood was swimming in either of two rivers down our village. It was so popular that going to the trading centre "ku vidiyo" was nearly nothing before it.
The parents in the hood were clear about having their kids go swimming in those rivers: a clear NO. No parent wanted their kid eaten by crocodiles. Going to the river merited a beating at night, or a bitter scolding. Almost all of us kids in the hood didn't care anyway. The only thing we cared about was not getting caught having gone to the rivers, which we seemed to do so well.
One of the rivers was very salty. A swim in that river was always followed by pale skins, an indisputable piece of evidence of you having gone swimming. One of us was once caught this way, and we quickly devised a means to avert future busts. After every swim, we'd apply sand, mud or clay on our bodies, as though we'd been playing elsewhere. This way, the parents were not smart enough to get us again, until one day when the unthinkable happened.
My mother went out to a funeral with her friends, and I was left to man the home with my younger siblings. Our friends came and found me and my siblings playing 'finger ball'. They were seemingly excited that their parents had gone to a funeral ceremony and that they were free to go swimming.
"Is your mother around?"
"No. She probably went to the same funeral as your mother," I replied.
The friend grinned.
I needed not ask what that grin meant. I went into the house, took off my school uniform and changed to my play gear. It was time to go swimming.
"Hope, where are you going?" asked my youngest brother.
"Bwa?" I replied. "Go to the kindergarten and help the sisters water the flowers."
"I'll tell that you went swimming!"
"Dammit!" I thought. "Dammit!"
"Do you want to go with us?" I asked impulsively. I would later regret making him this offer.
That wasn't an offer he was going to turn down. He joined the bandwagon, and in no time, we were at the river.
"When we get back home, we never came to this river. Okay?"
The little one nodded in consent.
In no time, everybody took off their clothes and jumped into the river. My younger brother jumped in with his pair of shorts on. The following 30 minutes were of screams of happiness and of sounds of water splashes our dives into the muddy waters caused. But the real muddy waters were asunder.
When my brother went out to step onto the huge trunk of a fallen tree we were standing on to jump into the water, he realised he was totally naked.
"My pair of shorts!" he shouted.
Silence. Our greatest fear had come back. Everybody inside the water went on a rescue mission for the pair of shorts. Five minutes passed, then ten, fifteen... The waters had carried it away.
"Your mother will know you came here if she sees Emmanuel without any pair of shorts. We need to to back home now, he must to wear another pair of shorts before she's back," suggested one of my friends..
There was no debating about it. We started to run back home, Emmanuel wearing only a t-shirt, his legs without anything lol. Time was approaching 4pm, and mother was certainly about to get home. We ran and ran, till we got home. Mother was coming out of the entrance of the house's grass fence when we arrived, trying to enter through that same fence. My brother naked, me absolutely nervous