Having encountered some faces from my childhood on FB, I tend to dispute the saying that ‘twenty children do not play for twenty years’.
In my sixth decade on earth, I have been lucky to ‘reknow’ these fine gentlemen and ladies. Of course, some of us are already grandpas and grandmas. One is even a gran-gran!
We thank God who has kept us till now. All praises go to Him. In fact we can not help praising Him, particularly when we consider all the hullabaloo we inadvertently made our parents go through. What is not funny is the fact that our own children are now retaliating in ample terms.
Sebi we used to scale fences to make our way to nocturnal parties. Some of us even timed our parents and turned their sitting rooms to discothèques.
We dressed then in our ‘James Brown’ trousers and ‘boogey-boogey’ shoes. Our formal wears were the Gaberdine three-piece suits. All were a departure from our parents pin-striped suits. Our children have started paying us back in an effort to rebel, they now claim they are wearing ‘old school’, similar to what we ourselves rebelled to.
But then we still read. From the slate in the infant classes, we graduated first to pencils and then to ‘biros’, as we then called pens. How can I forget the nibs and ink pots with which we stained each other’s kakhi uniform clothes!
We started our education with J.F.Odunjo’s Alawiye series and when we got to the upper classes we were introduced into the mystery of D.O.Fagunwa’s fantabulous novels like ‘Ireke Onibudo’, ‘Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmole’, etc. We were beneficiaries of ‘mother-tongue’ education.
While we were being introduced into our mother tongues, we were also learning our ABC simultaneously. One thing I vividly remember is that our textbooks hardly changed. So, a well-maintained book could literally pass from father to son. By the way, private schools were very rare in our days.
When we got older, we read the African Writers’ Series, James Hardley Chase, Nick Carter,etc. For games, we played scrabble, chess, monopoly,table tennis,soccer,ludo,whot,etc.
Our own children can hardly be separated from the internet. In fact, their world is not complete without the net. Our priceless phones have been turned into pieces by these children. They have ears, but they don’t seem to hear simple advices.
And what about their grammar, they can shoot elephants without guns when they speak. Their writing is even worse, they use obscene text-message-influenced abreviations.
For music, they listen to all sorts of jagbajantis. In our days we danced to blues, afro, hiphop and even listened to the king of music – jazz. But these ones will only dance azonto, sakiti bobo, soki, etc. Have you ever heard of such nonsense?
Well, we can only pray the prayer our own parents prayed for us. Then, we thought it was a curse. Their children, too, will repay them in their own coins.
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