IDLENESS BEGETS INFAMY (At least for me – that one time)
”It is better to go down in infamy than never to go down at all” – Jack Bowman.
My brother-in-law’s nickname for me is a sound, the mimicry of a rooster crowing. “Coo-Coo-Roo-Coooo….” He would crow whenever I walk into his house. Most times, I get irritated by it and ask him if he was ever going to let that go. Other times I smile and shrug it off, mumbling under my breath, “Am I never going to live this down?” But he was not the architect of the infamous sonorous moniker. No, the boys at the Catholic boarding school I attended had come up with that very original sobriquet. They found it an apt nickname for someone who deigned to do what a couple of my friends and I had ventured on one bright sunny afternoon atop the holy mountain on which sprawled Saint Augustine’s College, Nso – my alma mater.
If I have said it once, I have said it twice; parents need to pay as much attention to the skills their children demonstrate as being adept at, as to the skills they lack. If for no other reason but to nurture what the kids show proficiency in at an early age and not waste time pushing the kids to undertake what in their parent’s mind makes more sense, ignoring the child’s deficiencies or total lack of interest. (Insert disclaimer – sometimes it works out quite well, in cases where the kid needs just a little motivation. Other times its just, well, a waste of time and resources)
My dad wasted a lot of time and resources, trying to get me to learn Arithmetic. I am not sure why. There was nothing about me that indicated that at some point in my life, I might be able to find the elusive X or solve a fraction problem accurately. There was no empirical evidence to suggest it. My inability to understand the concept of mathematics was nothing short of Dyscalculia. One time, my class-7 teacher wrote up a problem on the chalkboard and asked us to provide the answer to it. He stood before the class, watching and waiting as pupils scrambled over their exercise books to solve the problem. I pretended to do the same. Then it was time for answers. I started fidgeting and searching for a nameless, non-existent item in my school bag – all head and hands in my backpack, trying to avoid getting called up to answer the question. Fool that I was. My teacher knew what I was doing, of course. He also knew I was the worst at Arithmetic in the class, and he asked me to answer the question after I finished ransacking my bag, looking for nothing.
Fast-forward, five years later, nothing had changed. If anything, I had just gotten worst at Math. I flunked it at the Ordinary Levels exam and dad, being a firm believer of the saying, “If at first, you don’t succeed, try and try again,” plied me with cash and sent me back to school the next summer to re-take Ordinary Level mathematics. And that is how I found myself back at school, in the summer of 1995 waiting to re-take the O’Level Math I had flunked the previous year. The same thing had happened to several friends of mine, and their parents had sent them back to school to re-take courses they had flunked a year earlier. The first time I took the exam, out of respect for the institution, I had scribbled a few meaningless numbers and some made-up mathematical formulas on my examination pad. This time around, I didn’t bother showing up at the examination hall. If dad wanted to waste his money on a wild goose chase that was on him − I would rather spend precious time doing exciting things.
“Idleness allows you to turn a situation from boredom to pleasure.” Tom Hodgkinson.
One blistering sunny afternoon, as my friends and I, walked around campus with nothing better to do with ourselves, but while time, we crossed paths with a bunch of roosters who seemed to be in the same state we were in – bored and idle, and walking about aimlessly. There was also a herd of cattle on the other side of the field grazing on straw and grass. Both groups of animals were under the wardship of Pa Langwa, the school cattle herder, but he seemed to be nowhere in sight. The nefarious idea of capture, kill, and eat formed in our minds at about the same time as we looked at each other, our eyes dancing with mischief and excitement. Finally, something to brighten our day! Up until that moment, I had indifferently witnessed the slaughter of countless chickens at home, knowing that I would never be a part of that phase of the process. I bolt if a chicken approaches me, and yet here I was getting into a fight or flight stance, preparing to tackle an innocent rooster.
We slowly surrounded the chickens, taking our positions around the fattest, most attractive one of them all. It was big and white, almost regal in appearance with a contrasting red comb on its head, which made it extra special (Agric fowl, they called them). It also could not run as fast as its friends. As we circled it threateningly, I felt fear start to creep up inside me as my heart raced in my chest. The rooster quickly identified me as the cowardly one of its attackers and attempted its escape through me as my friends lunged at him. I screamed out in fear and flew out of if its way as it soared past me. I burst out into peals of laughter at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation (My father would die, I thought for a split of a second). I was laughing so hard I didn’t realize when a few droplets of urine spurted through my underpants until I felt the pressure of my bladder threatening to unleash a full torrent of piss. But it wasn’t over yet. I stood up straight, held my legs together tightly in a twist, in an attempt to stop the imminent flow of urine down my legs, tears of laughter coming down my eyes as I watched my friends, arms flailing and levitating in attempt to catch a flying rooster. It was an absolute spectacle; the resolve and dedication on their faces was a sight to behold. If only we had put as much commitment toward our studies, we would not have been out here being felonious. It was one of the fun-nest days of my life. We got our bird, I took to the bushes, and eased myself, and we continued out of campus to a friend’s apartment. He had been expelled from school for whatever reason and was sitting for the GCE exams as an external candidate, not allowed to stay in the dormitories. That was fortuitous for us as we now had a place to cook up our game. For what its worth, we had a delicious meal – a last supper of sorts as the day marked the beginning of a new level of notoriety we did not see coming.
By evening time, word had already gotten out that a rooster had gone missing. By morning the next day, everybody knew we were the culprits. By afternoon on the same day, there was a new name for us − Coo-Coo-Roo-Coooooooo. The onomatopoeic appellation following us wherever we went. Every morning we walked to church, someone was hiding behind a window, screaming “Coo-Coo-Roo-Cooooo” at us. When we walked into the refectory, someone was taunting us with the sound at the end of the hall. The name-calling went on for a whole year after school resumed. Then one subversive act led to another, and another until the principal had enough of us and had us expelled from his establishment.
That rooster had cost about 5,000 CFA ($10.00), but the school administration made us pay 15,000 CFA each for it. You tell me who the thief is here.
