I have never been that excited about school in my life, but one normal weekend in my childhood, I waited anxiously for Monday morning, which has never happened.
I was about 10 years old at the time and it was the night prior to showing my teacher the first ever story I wrote, correction, the first ever anything I wrote.
What happened was that on one typical Thursday, I sat down in our living room with a pen and paper, for any other 10 year old this is routine, a time to scribble nonsense on a piece of paper to show their parents, looking for validation.
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But in my case, this is completely weird. I never sat at a table to write, I was illiterate a few months prior to that.
Normally I would be outside around that time playing with the other kids, pushing, kicking, shoving and playing rough games, inventing the rules as we play along. But on that day, I was there sitting with a pen and paper, a story in my head. After a few minutes of deliberate thinking, I began my story.
It was about a greedy tortoise and the rest of the animal kingdom. Did I mention back then our exercise notebooks used to have these short stories printed at the back that tell tales about a bunch of animals aptly titled ‘Animal Kingdom’, the main character usually does something bad and you guys end up with a moral of the story.
We enjoyed reading them and when you buy a notebook, sometimes you get the same story sometimes you get a new one, so we get excited fishing out the latest stories every time someone buys a new notebook.
So anyway, my story, it was about a greedy tortoise. He told everyone there was food down by the river (and there wasn’t any), when they left the village to check the river for food he ate all the food of the kingdom or village, when they came back they got understandably angry for the lie he told them and then also found their food missing, lion was king so he ate the tortoise, end of story.
Of course, it took more than this paragraph above and all afternoon to write out the whole story at the time, and I am sure there was a camel somewhere, I just can’t remember what he did or didn’t do.
When I showed my dad he was elated, he corrected some grammar and showed it to my mom. They couldn’t believe I wrote that myself, and for really good reason. I was an academic crisis.
They were so proud of me, and I was happy about that. I just wrote because I needed to write, not because of fun, or because I wanted recognition, I didn’t even know there was recognition to be had, I just wrote what was in my head, an original story.
Later my father would type it out and print three copies. One for me, one for him, and one for my teacher at school. My head buzzed when I found out my teacher at school was going to read my story.
Just how important does this writing make a person? I began to wonder.
When I got to school, I hesitated to show it to my teacher. I was in primary three. The first few periods passed, and I couldn’t find the ‘right moment’ to show him. If you knew me, you would know this was one heck of a task for me to carry out: to walk to my teacher’s desk and submit a paper. Are you kidding me? I am the type of kid that no one really knows my name.
But after a few moments of deliberation pulling the paper in and out of my bag, I decided to brave it out, the kids sitting around me were wondering what I was doing with an A4 paper. That always belonged to the adults.
I walked to the teacher’s desk at the front of the class and started to speak in incomprehensible grumbles, he managed to pick up the words “this is for you” and received the paper from me. I began to grumble (yet again) about how my father corrected some bits here and there but he didn’t hear me so I said “never mind”. The story was there and my name was written on it.
He read for like a minute or so and smiled, broadly. His reaction afterwards was priceless. Containing his excitement, he asked if I wrote it myself and I answered in the affirmative, his face beamed and he started praising me in a rather loud voice, he patted me on the back and shook my hand. Made the class clap a round of applause for me and showed every teacher who walked into our classroom that day. I was seriously considering becoming a better student.
He gave me back the paper but I told him it was his to keep, he was eternally grateful, he kept it safe in his drawer. I have never stopped writing ever since.
Nowadays, I write down my thoughts, lots of articles, poems and what could only be regarded as nonsense, because its usually anything at all, I scribble them down. I was at it until I became what I am today, a freelance writer, I write for the monies. It’s an exciting job and I love it. The thought of being an expert for hire makes me giddy, it almost feels like an assassin-type trope. Hired to carry out a task for tonnes of money.
Ironically the word freelance was from the Middle Ages when some men were mercenaries for hire, usually wielding a lance, they don’t belong to any particular army and a king could hire any of these ‘free lance’ characters to fight for him, known as free-lancers. So there, I got the ultimate dream job.
But knowing you are a writer is one thing, and having the resolve to become one is an entirely different thing altogether. It takes nerve to want to become a WRITER! especially if your home planet is Nigeria, twice the effort and double the wahala. I made up my mind not a long time ago.
Originally published around 2018 in my old blog.
