As a young boy whose hero is Jackie Chan, everything seems like a mission, and this particular party at Ola’s house seemed like the extra secret, third-world-war averting mission. It’s a mission in this regard because you know how kids play and are not careful.
I was trying my best not to have anything spilled on the clothes, so I can go home unstained, take off the clothes like it has a bomb vest and carefully fold it back into the deepest part of the wardrobe where it is been safely stored, all before my mum gets home.
So far, I’ve been largely successful with my super agent skills, nothing has stained my clothes yet, and after spending about two to 3 hours with these guys. I felt like I’ve done the best job, or so I will think.
I said my goodbyes to the group of my classmates, as I was climbing down the staircase, a devilish nail from no one punctured the arm of my long sleeves shirt, almost ripping one side of it into a short arm shirt.
Instantly, I feel weak, like my legs were giving up right underneath me. The worst has just happened, Kim Jong Un has just pressed the red button to launch the nuclear war. It has happened, this is the last thing I expected to happen. I thought all of my training had prepared me for today, for a mission I couldn’t screw up. I began to go over everything again, like a special agent that missed something but it has happened, I still raced back home to carefully position clothes, my mum won’t find out just yet.
I knew at this point that I was done for, but there is always a way out but one part of it is done, going and storing back the clothes, the tear will be rectified. Christmas is still months away. One thing I will not forget was when I got home with a dirty school uniform after playing football, after the thunderous slap, I was deaf in my left ear for a couple of days, that was just for dirty uniform, what will be the punishment for ruining Christmas clothes, that’s story for another day.
Back to the storyline of my secondary school life, Ola was my friend, and we pretty much go everywhere, people knew me because Ola was the popular kid, and even at our young ages, girls were always tripping for Ola even my own sweetim Joy. I was no competition either, it’s impossible, Ola and Joy attend the same church, there was a time she was telling me how kids of our age fight over Ola in church.
The bad news was that even Joy was also tripping with Ola, she was tripping for him. So, I swallowed my own likeness and never mentioned shit about it. I knew it would go away, it was only a matter of time.
As a kid, you’ve not been trained in the art of stealth gazing, where you’re looking and it’s not creepy at all. So, she would catch me looking at her, and in our class, if you get caught like that, your own don be be that, our bully in chief was this 6 ft 7 (of course exaggeration but it did look like that then sha) girl called Nnenna, she was tall and big, she picked on everyone even some timid teachers sef.
For some weird reasons, she only picked on me once, I think Ola had words with her, can we give this guy the Nobel prize right now? But no, Ola wasn’t always that good. In fact, Ola was a troll before trolls became an internet sensation, he had friends everywhere.
We were in Class C, our class didn’t have names of classes like fruits not like those bourgeois self-serving uptight ivy schools, don’t mind, I’m just being jealous, which isn’t an offense under the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, thank you very much.
Back to Ola being a troll, he had a friend in JSS 3A, his name, Segun Lopez. The difference between Segun and I was that he was more honest about his feelings for his classmate, Funke. She was said to be pretty but I didn’t think so, but you know what they say about beauty, it’s in the eye of the beholder.
It just kinda seemed like they were always fighting and stuff and Ola knew about this, so during break period, Ola would drag me to A to go visit Segun, then we would sit down and ask him about the babe, we would encourage him and then “Yimu” behind him. This sort of thing was what made me think I would take these feelings to my grave, I wasn’t about to get “Yinmu-ed” behind my back.
Ola could do all of these with the all of the girls around him giving him attention because he didn’t care. Even my own crush, Joy was offering to help write his notes while I was on the queue with her just borrow her note that I purposely didn’t write because I wanted a chance to talk to her.
Ola wouldn’t be my friend for long after our junior WAEC, my parent flung me to Ogun state to do my senior secondary school, which was well a disaster.
A few years ago, I searched for my classmates on Facebook, and let’s just say not everyone keeps their looks like during their childhood, she still had the smile but her eyes were tired like she had seen things.
Another chapter in my life was about to begin, our family friend introduced us to this out of state school because our school proprietor increased school fees by over 300 percent and my parents weren’t in the mood for any of that at all.
Next school was in Yewa, Ogun state. For the first time in life, I was all alone asides from our family friend Yomi who was a senior that left a year later after I got in, and things were going to get interesting for the timid young boy later to become Oniranu.
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