My childhood was beautiful, mostly because of the games and the innocence. Other than that, life around my parents was very hard. My mother used to hit me a lot because she had a very strong character. If I didn't get a perfect grade of twenty at school, I'd get beaten — as we say here colloquially, "a beating." I remember once my mother drowned me in the shower — it was actually kind of funny.
My brother was a kid who wet the bed a lot. My mother would tell him, "Don't do that, control yourself!" but he just couldn't. As he used to say, it would just happen. One early morning, like many others, my brother wet the bed again — and oh, did he wet it! My mother, furious, said one of those phrases we use around here: "That was the last straw." She sent him to take a shower, but my brother refused because it was freezing cold and the shower didn't even have a door! My mother picked him up, took him to the shower, stripped him naked, and basically threw him in headfirst, barely able to breathe and crying. When I saw that, I was traumatized — imagine your own mother, from how rough she was, drowning you!
And you may ask yourselves, "But if your brother wet the bed, why did you get drowned too?" Well, my mother had another saying: "If one gets punished, the other one does too." She left him like a soaked chicken — poor thing came out of the shower naked and traumatized, and then it was my turn. She picked me up, and all I remember was the water pouring down from the shower and not being able to breathe well because of how rough my mother was. But even though that traumatized me, I never showed weakness. As the older brother, I always felt the responsibility to stay strong so my brother would grow up the same way — with strength, and not being a soft person. It was always like that, even as a teenager and adult.
This was just one of my many childhood stories — interesting, isn't it?