To start with, the inspiration for this chronicle was found on WordPress, after I put up my 103rd post. I guess they felt that after sometime you run out of things to write about. On the one hand I agree with them; if your posts always revolve around love, there’s only so much you can write about! On the other hand, life is so exciting, there’ll always be something to write about! Pleasant or unpleasant, joyous or sombre, informative or just for entertainment; I believe there’s always something worth sharing with others.
So, what’s your worst injury? Physical o! If we’re talking emotional scars I’d just do a book at once, I’m sure one chronicle won’t be enough to tell the stories! According to Natasha Beddingfield, ‘I bruise easily’. Moving on, one condition for reading this post is that you must share one story of yours in the comments section. Agreed?
This story is set in the East, sometime in 1996. I was a few months from going to boarding school for the first time, and looking forward to having and being in control of my own provisions (whoop whoop)!! We lived in Owerri, Imo State at the time and our family friends lived around us, with young children about my age.
Now, if memory serves me right, Momma had asked us to go for the midweek service with her but we said we had homework. Now that I think of it, I wonder how/why she left us at home that day because I grew up with church more as reflex than an option.
Anyways, so she left, and after rushing through the said homework (I’m not even sure again if we even did it) we rushed to the house of my family friend on our bicycles. After we got bored playing in the house, we decided to hold ‘World Bicycle Championship’. We piled outside, mounted, and started racing. I won a few, lost a few, and then I said I was leaving because mom would be back home soon and if I was sweating (like I was then) I’d have some major explaining to do!
World Bicycle Championship ke nan!
“One more race”, the urchins pleaded that we did just one more. I didn’t need too much convincing anyway, and so we agreed. We had sighted their uncle at the end of the road and so the first person to reach Uncle Adimabuo (Igbo name literally translated to mean ‘I am not two’) would be the ‘winner winner’ or ‘ultimate champion’.
On your marks, get set, go! We took off, and being one of the stronger riders, I was soon in the lead. Then I felt something hit my back tyre, and next thing I knew, I was on the floor. Now there were three problems with that fall:
1. We had been racing on the road in the estate, which wasn’t totally done. It was a granite/asphalt/dirt road. Forming a picture in your mind yet?
2. We were speeding (duh, it was the World Championship), so when I fell my tyre continued spinning ( sturvs, lol)
3. I was wearing shorts and a shirt, so I wasn’t exactly covered. Feeling sorry for me yet?
If by now you are wincing from the pain/injury you’re imagining I endured, buy yourself a drink. I scraped both knees (majorly), my hands, it was horrible. Plus I was about 10 or eleven; the fact that I wasn’t a teenager yet compounded my fear, pain, fear, and pain again! My young mind was literally ‘between a rock and a hard place’; I was bothered (afraid even) of what my mom would do to me because she expressly said not to leave the house when she was going out. Not only did I disobey (which was an offence like the sin of witchcraft – 1 Samuel 15:23), but I had soiled my clothes, and worse still, hurt myself. In between that I was in excruciating pains and the blood I was seeing was almost driving me mad!
By the way, some people might have a low pain threshold, I don't have anything!
I cried that day eh! I’d never felt that much pain before! And then they had to cut the skin hanging, and then clean the wound with Milton (which my aunty had lied to me was water). The pain was unbearable, akin only to a heartbreak I endured like 10 years after.
By the time Momma got home from service, my friends’ mom had taken me home and was assuring me that ‘everything would be alright’. My darling mother (bless her heart) looked at me, saw my red, swollen eyes, and ‘had mercy’. She became preoccupied with soothing my pain, apparently the injuries were punishment enough.
The next few days were spent petting me (especially at bath times when water and soap would touch the wounds), and me getting practically anything I wanted because I was injured. I think I got stitches (not sure because I don’t see how I wouldn’t remember that) but how many years after, I still have visible reminders of that day in my mind, and an engraved version of the commandment, ‘CHILDREN OBEY YOUR PARENTS’!
This knuckle is for you!
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