The Crazy Nigerian

If the square peg fits . . .

I've always found myself to be kind of an oddball. I never really liked doing what everybody else was doing. From as early as primary school, I seemed different from most of the other kids. Whenever there was no teacher in class, most people would start running around and making noise-I would get busy doodling. Who am I kidding? I was practically making my own superhero comics. I had a partner-in-crime who helped nurture this hobby. He sat right at the front of the class, and I sat behind him. He was really good at drawing. Because he had mastered the art of shading, his drawings looked so realistic-whereas mine looked two-dimensional and asymmetrical. I remember he had two prominent superheroes: Astro Boy and Nitro Kid. So I came up with my own: Day Boy and Night Kid (you are probably giving me two out of ten for creativity). Whilst in junior secondary school, most of the boys were wearing NIKE trainers. I was part of the minority that wore suede Hush Puppies. Most boys had cool, punk hair-cuts; meanwhile, I was sporting Gary Coleman's afro (from Different Strokes). Most of the boys had baggy shorts sewn for them by their mum's tailors, but I had to settle for the extra-tight, crotch-hugging shorts the school provided. Why? My mum thought I looked smart. (I swear they looked like swimming trunks).

The bullies, however, didn't appreciate my fashion sense, and they had ways of dealing with fashion disasters like me. There was a popular errand the senior bullies would give to their juniors: you were given enough money to buy, for instance, a soft drink, but you were also expected to buy a meat pie, a doughnut, a chocolate bar, and a pack of chewing gum-and of course you had to bring back his 'change'. I've seen unfortunate junior boys cry after spending all their pocket money during this ordeal.

After my own experience with this errand, I sought advice from my cousin, who was a year ahead of me at the time. He told me I had two choices: hide during break time for the next three years (until I become a senior), or get myself a school father. I couldn't believe what I was hearing-school father? That sounded like someone who would discipline me whenever my grades were anything less than an 'A'. I could hear my imaginary school father saying to me, 'IF THOSE GRADES START SLIPPING, YOU'LL GET A WHIPPING! YOU HEAR ME, TOMAPEP?'

I was relieved when my cousin explained that a school father was more like a protector and guardian. That sounded great. Now, all I had to was find one.

My cousin and his family lived in one side of a twin duplex. On the other side were their neighbours, who doubled up as good family friends. There were three kids (one boy and two girls) who all attended my secondary school, and the eldest was three years my senior-he was the perfect candidate! I think when I attempted to ask him, I was beating around the bush so much that he eventually asked me himself whether I wanted to be his school son. I was over the moon! Unlike my ordeal with the two ladies who came to whisk me away from kindergarten, this time I was glad to be illegally adopted.

Consequently, I experienced a whole new way of school life. My school father was like Superman; he was always mysteriously just around the corner whenever I was about to get picked on. When he wasn't there, his friends would cover for him and make sure some other kid was given the dreaded errand. All of a sudden, my pockets were getting fatter; my pocket money was safe from the mischievous seniors, and this caused my spandex shorts to tighten even more. No one had to tell me . . . my bum looked big in them.

Other perks I enjoyed were the occasional 'sponsoring', which meant I could ask my school father for cash, and he would have no choice but to cough something up-even if it meant he had to ask his friends to contribute. I couldn't do this every day though, otherwise my school father would probably have disowned me and I would be up for adoption again. Not long after this new addition to my family, I realized that some of my friends had school mothers. If you have ever played chess, then you know that the king is not as powerful as the queen. They can both move in any direction, but the king can move by only one square; the queen is not limited in this way. In a similar way, school mothers are able to do more than just sponsor and protect their school children; they are also able to arrange hook-ups for the boys who wanted a steady girlfriend.

School mothers were usually well-connected and could transform even the geekiest looking kid into the next heartthrob in junior high.

This time, I didn't need to seek the advice of my cousin. I made another nerve-wracking trip to my cousin's next door neighbours to make yet another plea for adoption. Before you could say 'Tonwapiri' backwards, I had a school mother, complete with all the privileges. I started getting more attention from girls in my set, because they saw me hanging with my school mother and her friends, and I wasn't being sent on 'errands', because I was getting more protection than a virgin working in a condom factory.

I started experimenting with my afro and switched to punk. I successfully nagged my cousin's dad into buying me a pair of Reebok trainers, started wearing my cousin's old baggy shorts and made sure my mum was getting the tailor to work on a new set. I started wearing cologne and telling some of the beautiful girls in my class how my heart skipped a beat when I first laid eyes on them (at age twelve). I was listening to more and more rhythm and blues (or R&B) and crafting my own chat-up lines (most of which didn't get me very far).

All this while, there was a bit of segregation between the 'day students' (who did not live in the hostels within the school premises) and the 'boarders'. There was this preconception (and misconception) that the boarders were better than day students. My question was, on what basis? For the most part, boarders were not usually resident in Oyo and came from outside town, predominantly Lagos. The common belief was that their parents must be affluent to be able to afford the pricey boarding school fees. What I observed was that the senior boarders were actually the cool cats and the junior boarders were just next in line. I had nothing against boarders, but I couldn't stand it when my mates marvelled at how some boarders wore a different pair of shoes each week. I discovered early on that some of the boarders exchanged shoes amongst themselves, and so things were not always what they seemed. The boarders were supposedly the best dressers, the best charmers, the best kissers and even the best dancers. In short, only a small percentage of day students in my form were deemed almost as cool as the boarders. That pissed me off big time, and I decided to do something about it.

As I worked on a master plan, I evaluated my strengths and weaknesses: my dressing skills were just at par as
I was 'between wardrobes' whilst my mum often went shopping for some designer gear from the UK. My charm was rumoured to be effective, but it was mostly a lot of chatting without banking a girlfriend at the end. My kissing skills were non-existent as I was yet to kiss any girl in school. My dancing skills, however, were my biggest strength. Not only did I participate in hip hop dance lessons with my cousin and school father every weekend, but I was secretly one bad moonwalking, knee-jerking, crotch grabbing, and Wacko-Jacko prodigy. Back in primary school, I was crowned the best dancer amongst my peers after an impromptu performance at our end of year class party. I danced to Michael Jackson's 'Beat It'-it was electric! Even students from other classes ran over to my class to see what all the commotion was about, and my teacher was equally impressed. This time around, I wasn't going to keep it in the closet: I was going to show my secondary school who's bad.

The opportunity came up one day after class when some of my classmates were trying to pick out the best dancer. I watched as some boys performed back flips, down drops, and full-splits (I wasn't good at any of these). Then I got up from my chair, walked into their mist and spun around three times in succession-that got everyone's attention-and then I did a backslide from one end of the class to the other. All the guys applauded and hailed my short performance and, though I wasn't nominated the best dancer in the set, I had been noticed.

Two years later in my third form, my cousin and I practiced a ten-minute hip hop dance routine put together by our school fathers. It took about two weeks to perfect, and we eventually performed it at the school's variety show one evening. We called ourselves the Hype Boys. There was one part of the routine, however, that I didn't execute very well; it involved a leap and forward roll that left my head throbbing after I used it to break my fall (I don't think anybody noticed). We received a standing ovation, and the next day the other students were spreading the word. I remember walking past two junior students and hearing one of them say to the other, 'That guy can dance.' I was enjoying my new-found celebrity status.

An even bigger opportunity came for me to prove myself in my final year at secondary school. I was to perform Michael Jackson's 'Dangerous' in front of hundreds of students, including those invited from neighbouring secondary schools. But after weeks of practising, the unexpected happened: I was struck with malaria a day before my scheduled performance. I couldn't believe that after all the trouble I had gone through (including getting short-length black trousers and white socks), I had to stay at home and dance with the devil instead. I guess some things just weren't meant to be.