MY UP AND DOWN CHILDHOOD

You had a crazy childhood? I bet you'd think I had a milk-flowing 'pampery' one but nada. I feel growing up in Nigeria is laced with this uniqueness both negatively and positively. You can't compete with our definition of fun. It's an entirely different ball game.

♡ I played draft. You can't be a 90s kid who grew up in a ghetto and not know that game except you had a sad childhood.

♡ I played rubber band...set it up on my thumb and index finger and release it with force watching it go far and roll away. Do you remember come-back-to-me?
Weaving the bands into one long thread and hanging it on my neck with pride like a gold medal.
Throwing it to lap on the rubber band of another opponent in competition.

♡ Oh my dear Counter. How can I forget the creative way with which we utilised you. Asides kicking it over with my finger, I used it as tires to my dream paper cars.😂 Those cars we made of empty paper boxes and drove along where ever we went. Nuisance!

♡ I gambled a lot. Using 10 10 or 20 naira as baits. Often I was robbed clean of my snacks money😂. I was bad at these things. I'd always beg the winner to please refund my money as I was only joking.

♡ I played house. Gathering the stray kids around and playing the caring role of the imposing and talkative Nigerian mum (very typical) 😂.

♡ I was a teacher. I tutored whoever cared to enrol for my classes/lessons. School resumed same day and ended same day with reports cards adequately computed. Oh dear! I remember my small mobile blackboard given to me by my teacher father.😂I flogged the nonsense out of those kids.

♡ I played 'In Out, Out In, Enuguuu' 😂 please tell me you aren't lost. Tell me you can relate. This game helped us know all the states in Nigeria.

♡ I played 'Air Air, War Start, Firrrre'. Using my pawpaw branch with sticks as my dane gun shooting and killing innocent souls at random. You'll hear shrill cries of 'I killed you first, die die' coming from our cheerful throats.

♡ I entered the lagoon in my street in search of peakmilk labels and empty packs of sachet cowbell just so I could win some rolls of milk and fancy biros.😂

♡ I did roll some papers into the shape and size of a cigarette, lit fire to one end and smoke away in an euphoria of stupidity😂

♡ I cut the mouth of my rubber toy open just to feed the poor lifeless thing with my dad's Venus cream all in a failed attempt to share in the joys of motherhood.

♡ I'd carry some kids in my nursery school during break time on my back, pinching them to make them cry so I act like a mother trying to pacify a crying baby. Smh.

♡ In sheer foolishness I would run to the centre table in our house to pretend like I was sleeping once dad was back so he wouldn't know I was the gangleader in the play on-going in the compound. I'd 'idiotically' shut my eyelids so tight thinking that was an evidence of someone who had fallen into deep sleep for hours. How ignorant can one child be?😂

♡ I always looked forward to those moonlight tales irrespective of the fact that the stories were overly repeated and recycled that there was almost nothing to look forward to again.

♡ I was a clay(ndom) lover. No. Addict is the word.. I never bought it. Always clandestinely stole or scratched a piece from Eka Okon's shop. The day I was reported to dad, I died and resurrected from beatings. I'm still looking for that little girl that reported me.🔫

♡ We took turns to stay inside a wheelbarrow as my friends pushed and wheeled us like James Bond😂

♡ I drove tires

♡ Danced and played in the rain. I'd often jump into mum's big water pot outside whenever rain fell pretending to be in a swimming pool.

...my ink needs to be refilled. While I'm at it, tell me your version of childhood in Naija.

@PENNITT BY GLORIA EDEM.