Oh! Mom and Dad

Learning from Victory's story:

You might say that I had a boring childhood. The average child went to fun places like the farm or fun cites. I spent mine poring through every book I could find. My elder brothers got so tired of me that they started hiding their books from me. When I look back at my childhood, the early 1990s and early 2000, I realize that my dog eared sister’s books and my underlinings in my brothers’ books had more value to me than my blue and red ATM VisaCard is to me now. It didn’t matter the genre of the book as long as it was black print on paper, I saw them as tickets to new adventures. To me, everything in a book must be believed to be understood and I saw these books as the complete reality. Hence, I was tagged a bookworm.

All my life, fantasies and reality weren’t much different to me.  As children, we regularly mixed myths and truths. There is no real issue until we carry these myths and think that they are facts. This is the case when we begin to believe these myths. And before we know it, we have believed a load of untruths and that leads us down a worthless, frustratingly futile dead end road.
Like most of my age mates. Fantasy for us was from games or cartoons, whatever colourful thing on television. Having consumed all books available, I dived into TV watching and before you know it; my TV became a major satisfier for my never ending imagination.
I did a lot of playacting while growing up. I didn’t do the mama and papa ones I just learnt children did while I was growing up. I have lots of brothers, you see, and there was really not much time for playing with anybody that was not my sibling. Still, I relied on my comic book collection, Supa Strikas, and tried to play ‘Shegs’ but football was not my calling so I stopped acting ‘Shegs’. I then moved to X-men series. I liked the Wolverine character, hence started playing him. I would put three nails with each nail between my fingers and then ‘be wolverine’. I also did ‘Superman’ with my father’s wrapper tied around my neck like a cape. Oh, what a fun time that was.
I was born and raised in Lagos, Portugal….oops, I meant Lagos, Nigeria. Once a while, it would be nice to claim things, wouldn’t it? I was born during the emergence of my country from military rule so things were a bit tight. I recall wearing more than one sock per foot on my way to school so that each sock would cover the holes in the sock on top or beneath it. What a pair of shoes I had! They were my play shoes, school shoes, and Sunday shoes all in one. I believe that any piece of clothing is good as long as you haven’t outgrown them. So I took care of these shoes until the soles were as thin as a paper or until my feet outgrew them….glory/ gory scenario, you think?
Air-burger and Water….

We had little money but my mom was and is still a genius in making us seem rich…especially in our food. She packed my lunch, usually yam and palm oil, as if I was having lunch from Kentucky fried Chicken. I remember the morning I asked her what the meal of the day was, expecting her to say her usual ‘white yam and red oil’ reply, she beamed with the most beautiful smile ever and said, “young man, today, you’re eating air-burger and water”. I was so happy on hearing it was a different meal from the norm that I didn’t even bother to check my lunch pack until I got to school. Break time had barely reached by the time I dived into my lunch pack only to realize my mom had only put water in my waterbottle and nothing else. So I yawned all through the rest of the day… and that’s how I ate lots of airburgers that day. Funny mommy, she could even make poverty fun.
My dad was and still is a man of awesome imagination, and we would often play a little good night game that became our special ritual. After telling us lots of village stories about the tortoise, why it had a broken shell or why the moon stayed in the sky not on earth or why the moon shone very bright only by the end of the month, he would come into our room, the boys’ room to tuck each of us in. My dad was a handyman so he fit little bedside lamps beside each of our beds. When he was tucking us in, we would use that opportunity to tell him about our day, who beat us in school, who we beat in school and stuffs like that and he would offer bits of advice here and there. And as he was leaving my bedside, Dad had a way of leaning back against the switch of my bedside lamp and rubbing against it to ‘magically’ blow out my light like the birthday candles on the cakes I saw in movies.
As he did his little routine, Dad would say: “I’m blowing out your light now, and it will be dark for you. In fact, as far as you’re concerned, it will be dark all over the world because the only world you ever know is the one you see through your own eyes.  So remember, Victory, keep your light bright. The world is yours to see that way. I love you, Son.  Good night”.
When I was very young, I used to lie there in bed after Dad left and ponder upon what Dad said. What exactly did he mean that the whole world was dark while I slept? It was really confusing to think that my sleep meant the world’s darkness and that the only world I would ever know was the one I would see through my own eyes. What Dad was trying to tell me was that when I went to sleep at night, as far as I was concerned, the world came to a stop. When I woke up in the morning, I could choose to see a fresh new world through my own eyes-if I kept my light bright. I could thus choose to have a bright outlook to life and the world would be bright to me. I could choose to be happy and the world would be happy. If I was not feeling well, the world was not feeling well also.
Having that understanding set me on a course in life that no matter what life throws at you, its all a matter of how you see it and react to it. Mommy made having only water as lunch in school sound like the royal dream of every child. Daddy helped me to always choose how I would always see life and the world. Seeing life as I wanted to see it helped me choose what I wanted in life and arrange how I got what I wanted from life. And handling situations as they come, Momma’s style helped me always make the best use of situation. If life hands you yam, make yam porridge with it. if life hands you lemons, make lemonades. That’s what I have done and yet do.  And that is what you should do and always do.
This is just me scratching my head…it helps to do so though, lol.