I
sincerely lay no claims to being more knowledgeable than anyone, but I
do confess that better than I did yesterday, last year and a decade ago.
Isio Knows Better
is an attempt to capture the shocking and highly entertaining
conversation within myself. The conversations between my mind (the sharp
witty one), my soul (the lover and the spiritual one) and my body (the
playful one concerned with the more mundane things of life). She is the
eternal referee between the caustic mind and the sensitive soul. This is
Isio. So, here’s to making private conversations public.
Enjoy!
The little me eyed the bar of metallic
railing that separated the cemented floor of my dormitory veranda from
the sands of the outside play area. Little Me was contemplating doing
something others thought ridiculously impossible, except that she was
confident that she could do it. “It is a pity I don’t have an audience…” Little Me thought to herself. “Something truly epic is about to ’apun!”
Adult Me does not know how Little Me convinced herself that it would be a terrific idea to perform a gymnastic swing through the railing, but thinking back, all I remember of the next few moments were…
My belly on the bar poised for the swing…
The heady adrenaline rush as I swung elaborately upside down on the thing (gymnast style)…
The most unnatural feeling of being
suspended between “two worlds”. My head where the dormitory was and my
tiny feet where the play area was. As I tried to wiggle out of the cold
metallic grip the evil railing had cast upon my glorious neck, I
realised anxiously that I had misjudged the size of my head, and the
athletic powers our matrons swore the ugly brown beans we were forced to
eat twice daily gave each student. This was a lie. If I had my head back I would have gritted my teeth at this realization. But first things first… my head. I needed it back.
God must have looked down from heaven
and pitied me, because after a few moments of struggling like a goat I
got my head back. I didn’t even wait to find my Dunlop slippers-
the second I realized I had my head back I just fled with the velocity
of a galloping horse. Far far away from the dormitory and the evil
railing. Useless thing wan kill me sha. Odieshi.
I didn’t speak for the next few hours.
Luckily for me it was the last day of
the school term and when it was announced that Mother had come for my
sisters and I, I tucked my report card into my school bag and grabbed my
portmanteau from the Box Room very quietly. I noticed the
astonishment of the Matron at my slipper-less feet. She didn’t ask and I
didn’t explain. As horrible as it was, the encounter with the “evil
railing” was already in the past. At that moment, I was more worried
about the future that awaited me in Lagos.
On the ride home I gingerly consulted my report card again.
YEEEKPA! Father was not going to like this at all.
It was true. Father was an intellectual
who placed platinum value on academic excellence. He gave us everything
we needed and only asked for one thing in return. NO AVERAGE GRADES.
Your “A”s must be more than your “B”s. Don’t be accumulating “C”s
please. Two “C”s per term is one “C” too many. In my family, having a
“C” was borderline fail. “D” was a disaster and a blatant fail that
meant you were doomed. “E” and “F” were abominations that did not even
exist in our household and had no business being in your report card.
Ha! Just kidnap yourself and disappear after the school term.
My sisters were chattering away, happily comparing their grades. One said she had seven “A”s and two “B”s.
I wondered if it was too late to kidnap myself…
They wondered who would get the
presents… Father always bought the one with the highest grades presents.
They asked to see my report card…
I closed my eyes and played dead.
And Mother continued to drive home merrily…
Exactly two days after we got home,
Father called me to bring him my report card. I wondered why he called
me first. I was the last born, couldn’t he have called for the older
ones first? As I stood there woodenly, reluctant to stretch forth the
hand that held the report card, I tried to remind myself that I was
Daddy’s little princess. The one he loved most dearly.
Surely he wouldn’t actually do anything badddd to meeeee. For
sure he would scold me like he had done the last two times. I would be
ashamed for a while and say that I was sorry and then I would go play,
and run and practice kung-fu with decapitated broom-sticks. And while we
are at it… I didn’t actually fail naaaa, So what if I got a few “C”s and “D”s. Fine, okay, only one “A” but who was counting? Besides. I was always one of the best in my class before the last two terms. That had got to count for something.
I realized I was still standing there.
He gave me “The Look”.
I stretched forth my hand.
“What is this?” Father was not a man of
many words, but that day he said even less. Though he said something
like – he might very well just go fling his money into the ocean, as I
had decided to come home with yama-yama grades – which
was especially annoying, considering the amount of money he spent on my
education per term. Upon further perusal, he saw that I had failed
Mathematics, and so he sent me to go bring a pen, a paper but no
calculator.
I thought he wanted to tutor me o, little did I know.
He made me calculate some things shaaaaaa.
Manually. My age, the total of my grades, something minus this and
that, plus this- raised to power that and then divided by this, this and
that. And then add that first one to the square root of this – raised
to power that.
Shuo, Papa, which kain Maths be dis?
Somehow the final figure came to 88.
He said that was the number of strokes of Koboko I had earned for my yama-yama report card. I was sent to go fetch the Koboko of my choice. I started to cry.
Loudly.
Did he flog me? Yes. But definitely nothing close to 88 strokes. Doubtful it was even up to six strokes sef.
But I screamed and ran around the compound in circles after every
stroke. Either it broke his heart to see me so tormented or he was
simply exhausted by my theatrics, all I know was that he ceased and let
me cry it out. He later took me out for ice-cream and made me promise to
do better. Father was a just man. Strict, but just.
I can tell you this, that Koboko reset my brain. In fact, it gave it a futuristic upgrade. Never again would I forget that “D”, “E”, and “F” did not exist..
So powerful was this reset, that in the summation of all the courses I
took in the years I studied in UNILAG, I can count the number of “C”s I
ever had. The other students asked how I did it while working part-time.
Some whispered that it was witchcraft. But it was nothing so grand. It
was simply the Consequence of the Koboko. (Chuckles!)
So… can you recall you at your naughtiest as a child? Did your parents wipe you for your own good? How did it make you better?
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