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Like most kids I spent much of my youth in the park. Not THE park, but the park I a grew up by. While the other kids were playing on the slide, I was on my hands and knees digging through the grass in search of a four leaf clover. Why? I wasn't a superstitious child, but I believed that such a rare treasure would bring me fame and fortune. This was before reality tv when you had to work for your fame.

Then the council got rid of the slide, because it was too dangerous. Instead, people started playing on the round-a-bout all the time, but still I searched for the elusive plant.

Then a kid fell off the round-a-bout and cracked his skull open, so to stop any future law suits the council had it taken away and replaced with a painted maze on the floor. It was rubbish. All that was left was the swings. One day the local bully came to the park and made the chain of the swing wrap around the top bar so many times it became impossible to swing from. It was a logistical nightmare.

People had nothing to do, but they saw me on my hands and knees and like mindless parrots of the hand, they got down on their knees and started looking for that clover. Within minutes, Sally Jessop had found one. There was no way that there'd be another one in the park. The game was over, my childhood had been wasted, I was 22 years old.

Linda, Wrexham.

1 comment:

  1. I found a four-leaf clover once on a camping trip with my ex-boyfriend. I was young, foolish and madly in love with him at the time. That night in our tent, he proposed. I thought it was the luck of the clover. But then that weekend he dropped a bunch of acid, thought he met Jesus (the guy's name was Jesse), completely lost his mind and became a loony zealot. Thereafter his behavior turned erratic and possessive which led to our dissolution a couple months later. I lost all faith in the clover. But now, with the clarity of hindsight, I see that it was actually incredibly lucky that I didn't marry a man who had a possessive loony zealot lurking inside him. My faith in four-leafers was restored. The moral? Don't do acid.

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