The foolish things you do when young!

My childhood was bliss probably because I was a child and the innocence that comes with being a child shields you from the harsh realities life has to offer. Only when the years roll by does the screen of innocence fade away and then you realise that what you thought was bliss was a mirage.

Anyway I wonder how many of you remember what it was like to be young and free and of course foolish. I laugh and wonder at how one could ever have done half of the things we did as youngings!

Almost all our holidays were spent in the land of beauty 'my home town'. One of the great attractions was that we were free from the restrictions of school. Not quite though! We spent the holidays (every single one of them including mid term breaks) with our grandparents. My grandmum was a teacher of the 'no nonsense' variety so even though we were on holidays we had a fairly regimented schedule. We would wake up in the morning, do our chores, bathe, eat, have a mini school session where 'granny' as we fondly called her gave us sums out of that horrid book 'Larcombes'( I wonder how many Nigerian kids used it!) and then we would write essays or letters home before we were allowed to play.

But we found many ways to enjoy ourselves even without 'granny's' presence for even teachers have to go out. Once granny left the house and left us in care of older cousins, you could be sure we would run riot. We would jump all over the house playing hide and seek and woe betide us if we were in the middle of 'catcher' screaming our heads off when granny arrived. We were sure to receive a grand scolding.

Well one lovely day, granny and grandad had gone out and we had the whole house to ourselves. We decided to go swimming. The only problem was that there was no swimming pool in the house, the only thing that resembled a swimming pool was grandads fish pond full of cat fish. That was no deterrent to us and we trooped down to the fish pond. The fish pond was full of fish and the water was not exactly clean enough for swimming but we were young and foolish and we kicked off our shoes and dove in. In retrospect I am not sure any of us could swim.

A few minutes into our adventure, an uncle came and shouted in horror at us to get out of the pond. I cannot remember the whole confrontation but we ignored him and continued to have what we felt was a jolly good time. Of course we jumped out and made ourselves presentable before our grandparents arrived forgetting that we had been seen and our misdemeanor would not go unreported.

That evening shortly I heard my twin crying, I rushed into the room  only to find myself face to face with my grandfather who had gotten wind of our activities that day in his fish pond and was scolding her. He blamed her for not taking her aburos(younger ones) under her wing and not being a good example (that day was the only day I remember accepting to be called the junior twin and not fighting to be called the older) and he threatened that if we did not behave ourselves we would never be allowed to spend holidays there again.

Our tears were tears of true repentance, we loved to go to our hometown and not being allowed to come would have been the ultimate punishment. I am sure he did not mean it but our little hearts broke with fear that our parents would hear of how naughty we had being and support the sanctions. I do not think we were naughty for a long time after that but the next time we were, our tears flowed like the river jordan and we could not stem the tide but that is a tale for another day!

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