If we could turn back
time
I do not know how I
would have been able to help my parents redo elements of my upbringing that
might with hindsight has made me a better person. However, I do notice there
are things that I picked up by example and other things that probably would
have been better imparted by clear instruction and relatable lessons of life
rather than relying on the osmosis of parenting.
Two specific things I
think my parents left to osmosis, the hope that I turned out the way they
expected without their active engagement, first, the management of money and
secondly the real usefulness of school and academic achievement. I think I
understood I was lacking in financial wisdom when I was sent away at 10 to take
common entrance examinations.
I was given some
money which I frittered away and spent on things I rarely had access to like
comics and gave some away to the cousins who could take advantage of my naivety
and generosity, I was no wiser. During that visit, I was also given money by
relations, it is strange as I remember today that I was able to account for
everything I was given by them, but not properly for what my parents gave me.
The way the questioning went, about how I spent the money suggested they were
quite displeased with me.
No reason I knew
I attended primary
school because that was what you did, I effortlessly passed my examinations
usually coming second or third in the class, but I hated revision or homework.
There were many times I was caught out in class, lying that I had submitted my
homework when I had not. It was a shameful and embarrassing experience when Mrs
Onyemenam would put me in front of the class and have my classmates call out in
unison, Liar!
There was a time I
was a bedwetter both at home and in the first year and a half at secondary
school, yet, in the almost 5 months I spent with relations in Lagos and Sagamu
before secondary school, I never once wet my bed until my father came to visit
and I spent the night with him at his hotel when he was down for a business
trip.
In secondary boarding
school, I probably had serious child psychology issues that were attended to
with rituals, amulets, and crazy animist practices. I always lost my things, rarely
took notes in class and by the third year, I played truant hating some of the
classes because they were exhausting and boring. It ended up on my school
report, my mother a school principal was completely exasperated that she had a
truant for a son.
The cane was not my
bane
Whilst I never face
corporal punishment for my academic achievements or failures even when I had to
withdraw because I failed a repeated year in polytechnic, there was no shortage
of criticism and excoriation especially from my father, a brilliant and a high-achieving accountant who must have sometime wondered how I came to be his
son.
I can say in
polytechnic I was clinically depressed, I had instances when I attended classes
and I could understand what was going on or why I was there. I was not abusing
substances or anything, I just had a head that seemed to be completely unaware
of what I was doing. It is strange that I seemed to keep my sanity by
falling into religion. It did not make matters any easier at home.
It was in these areas
of disagreement and misalignment with my parents’ philosophies that I suffered
the most and received the severest corporal punishments, they together ganging
up on me, it was also an opportunity to humiliate, as I was ejected from my
room and made to sleep on the floor.
The home was not a school
to success
Now, in the minds of
my parents doing everything they knew how to bring up successful and well-adjusted
children, they were doing their best with the tools they had. Too many times, the comparison was the weapon to refocus, an uncle there or an aunt there who
somehow had some opportunity but apparently wasted it became the terror of what
you did not want to be.
In the end, the
greatest lessons in life that helped me out of the rut I was in was not the
discipline, the disagreements, the fights that included a headbutting from my
father, or that backhand swipe of my mother that so connected well with face
momentarily blinding me, it was in the understanding of other uncles and aunts
who had experienced failure and overcome those circumstances to be successful.
It is ironic that many
of them had some guidance from my parents when they were at their lowest ebb,
they repaid by giving their nephew allowances, opportunity and encouragement to
turn my life around and believe I really could make something of my life. None
of this is to spite my parents, but there are aspects of child development that
have left scars even if they seem to be healed.
