When I was a teenager, and in secondary school, I had a lot to say about how much certain things sucked that really affected my mental health. The fact that I failed my WAEC at the first attempt made me realize how I wasn’t serious with my education and how a single mistake can change the rest of one’s life. I wouldn’t stop listening to the toxic words that already put many people into huge trauma that parents failed to get the message early enough to know when to stop scolding or give advice and helping matters. Wo, awọn ẹgbẹ lo ti wa ni school yen, ma gbá ju mo iwe é".
But in all manner of honesty, who would blame a mother that impacts other kids through 8-6 teaching and the society keeps asking her, ‘bawoni result ọmọ yín’ and she kept on murmuring on excuses that are not valid! But, sometimes, the attitude of non-conforming and damning the expectations of society needs to really take a place for things to get right.
How would I explain that I vowed not to attend the maths teacher classes anymore because the class failed at the attempt of solving some quadratic equations, bearing and distance or HCF/LCM, and he uttered ‘bad morning’ to us all after we greeted in chorus ‘goooood moreeeen sa’? Or the one that wouldn’t want to see you in her Maths and Agric class because your answers were perfect, yet scored you wrong with your mother coming to school to report and she took you as her enemy. Would I ever be able to concentrate in that kind of class after humilation in front of the assembly, class and the nickname of ‘eke’ which means cheek which buried the name my parents named me all because I was fat?
Should I still talk about the private tutorial that mother organized so as to pass and upon entering his one-room-apartment, it was explicit content of Rose sucking the down thing of Jack! And man had a hard-on. Thanks to to intelligence of leaving immediately after 13 seconds of catching up. Until years later, narrating to mother why I stopped attending there anymore and rather go to a friend’s place, borrow textbook and fill out the day’s topic because she must not know you were absent.
It was the librarian at the library that gave some of us life by giving us a space to read, borrow books and made us develop interest in writing. Some took to drawing while others got their inspiration from the old classes that weren’t in use, rolling dice or visiting Onile at his shop to "press" game pads.
Getting back on track came after wondering how to survive amongst 700+ students. That’s when seriousness, focus, determination, self-discovery and personal development came in. A little kid needs to heal faster and leave behind negative experience while intentionally growing exponentially.
In all shades of honesty, it was years after the whole incident happened that the dawn of trauma came upon, because there’s an answer that’s needed to be provided for not acing the O’level in the first attempt.
Damn the society! Never compare that kid to another! Protect the chap! Ask him what he’s going through. Because Tito once told me that, "Many of us blame those that birthed us and prepare not to treat our wards the same way we were being treated." We’d almost fail at it because the pain that has been inflicted on us is bound to haunt us and stick for life, possibly to be passed down, and on that path, it keeps going.
Okikiola Sulaimon is an HND2 student of the department of Mass Communication
