As a kid

As a kid

As a kid, I so much heard adages that I never understood until I grew up. The bible helped in differentiating the good from the bad since I was scare of going to hell. Everyone has a past that keeps hunting his or her mind. When I was ten years old, I came across three elderly men sitting beneath a tall palm tree lamenting on the past years, which they miss. The stories they told were touching that I had to shear tears with them. I never had things to think of; I played and ran around the street in pantaloons. Electricity supply was a failure hence hopscotch, football and hide and seek were my favorite games. For this present day child, computer games and movies have taken over my favorite games. My parents were neither poor nor rich yet they had a farm. I hated farm work that at then when my mother would ask my elder sister and I to carry a basket fill of cassava from the farm to the house, we would wonder why a mother would be so heartless subjecting her own little children to such stressful hard work for little did we know it was part of the parental care, and she loved us. Keeping things hide or hair of course, I never hesitated to half my basket as I walk through the lonely path. I learnt pounding fufu by force. At then the mortar always ran as I stroke the pistil crushing the yam; so I would summon all my younger ones to get hold the running mortar. My dad never made mistakes giving me multivitamins whenever I leave for school and I also never forgot to deposit it in the waste bin as soon as I got to school.

 There are many things on earth that exist crystal clear, but we realize only when we fail. When I was ten, I made a bet with a friend. The bet was called hit and fall. Anyone who succeeds in striking down his opponents’ property would own it. A very good sport I felt as I made success claiming his stuffs. At that year, my mum had a store. One day he came to buy sweats, as I picked up to sweat cup to give him his articles, he stroke it down.

Of course, that was my mums’ stuff; I fought hard with him until the neighbors came. They separated us and reported the case to my mum when she came back.

I was thinking I just saw the sunlight for the last time and was annoyed that I wouldn’t have a befitting burial as I was a bad kid. So surprising she did not beat me up like other days, but yelled and scared the living soul off me. This narrow path seems not worthy but it is the generator of my decency.

The past plays a major role in the present that if there is something I would not dear for the love I have for my mother; it is gambling.

Onyeche Vincent Ehiedu Onyeka.