LAUGH BUT ALSO LEARN AND TELL ME WHAT YOU HAVE LEARNED, PLEASE ...Some of the mediocre pupils in class knew the answer but Yours Truly, The Genius, didnt. I had my entire primary education in the village. It was rough indeed and my elder sister and I had really patchy experiences then. We had a mother that was dependent on a miracle to survive an illness of close to ten years. No father and no financial muscle in the form of a strong family member. There were times when we used kerosene as cream when vaseline was hard to come by - but how deceptive kerosene is, making you bright one minute and then rapidly turning you into a white-wash tomb the next moment! We also used palm-oil as cream for our skins. Hey! Dont even ask if my green school shorts had holes behind them covered with patches of different materials. I dont know! The first time I heard the name nursery school was in JSS 1 when my social studies mistress asked what primary school I attended and I told her LGEA primary school...she then concluded that I must have attended a classy Nursery School. That was the first time I would hear the name Nursery School. Amazing! And since she didnt put it in question form, I didnt care to reply. I just smiled - whatever she meant by that. I came from such a background but I was full of self-belief which I didnt know where it was coming from. I share with you a story: I was in primary six and still a table-topper in class. By the grace of God I was a village champion in school, favourably among the top three in class from start to finish. One day we had an English lesson and the topic was Present Tense, Past Tense and Perfect Tense. The teacher started thus: The past tense of want is wantED; the past tense of Greet is GreetED; who can tell us the past tense of Stop? Everyone was afraid to speak and because no one was confident as to whether it would follow the same pattern as the previous two verbs or not, there were different opinions with some actually calling it correctly. In such a case, I knew someone would be summoned to give a definitive answer and I loved the fact that it was likely going to be Japhat Jacob myself. I was thinking proudly: I GO CHOP MARKET TODAY. When the class teacher turned to The Genius and said Emma, save the class, I was excited and so I stood up, looked around with ecstasy and said STOP....PED as in STOP and PED. What outrageous morning of a thousand laugh the class turned into. Everyone was disappointed, including my teacher, and it was the end of the Class that day. STOP...PED was the topical issue that day and beyond. But it was only those who could beat me up that risked taunting me by calling the name. Several Years later, each time I teach students, I tell them: Stumbling is not a disgrace but stumbling twice over the same stone is a proverbial disgrace. I hate repeating my errors but more so I hate the fear of failure. But for your grace Lord...hmmm!
Posted on: Thu, 07 Aug 2014 18:31:14 +0000
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