Chapter 1: Introduction

I had just started to listen to Mother as she read adventurous stories from one of the books she had bought at the latest children's bookstore. I was quite sure she had patronized the bookstore because her old friend, Mrs. Bimbo owned the bookstore.

Mother had told me about how she and Mrs Bimbo were (that which I knew was still happening) always talking for hours. Anytime she wanted to talk about those days, I had always caught her chuckle. She would say, "I and Dalapo(Mrs Bimbo Maiden name) would always laugh at lecturers as we wonder where they got their baggy trousers and the "buggy-buggy" shoes they were always wearing". That was why, sporadically, I frequently thought of how they concentrated in school. I later answer the question myself. Mother was a ferocious reader, same thing Mrs Bimbo. She could actually read anything. I was not surprised when Mother took me to what she called her "Mega Library". It's so large, she told me there are 914 books in the library, consisting from books on sciences, law, accounting, engineering, the Constitution, down to novels, novellas, short stories, anthologies of poems and amazing plays and so many more. This is why occasionally, I do wonder why mother chose to be a teacher instead of going into something like Medicine, Engineering, or something in her field of sciences. She would have gone far. After all, readers are leaders.

Back to reality, I had first objected to listen to her because, I'm too old for them. I am the one who is meant to read it to myself if I care. I'm seventeen for crying out loud, and surprisingly to some, I'm in class 3 of the Senior Secondary School, popularly known as SSS3. But Mother hesitated that I listened to her. She didn't buy it in vain. So, I listened to the story. It was about a little kitten whose wish to see the world on a flying mat was fulfilled. Funny enough, it was interesting to me. My prediction about them being boring was not true. But still, I pretended to hate it because I didn't want her to come and sit at my side on bed the following night, reading them to me. I slept off that night immediately she left, and dreamt of what the kitten in the story had felt and seen on their mat. I woke up the next day, almost damaging my alarm clock. It was making this kind of miserable sound. I was already having another dream, in fact, an even sweeter dream. It was about me and Oyin. A girl I had fallen in love with back in school, but hated me. In that dream, she liked me. In the dream, we were sitting under a tree. Holding hands. There we sat singing to ourselves lullabies of love, but unfortunately, when she told me she wanted to tell me something, the miserable sound of the alarm clock started. It was 5:46 in the morning. The perfect time for me to get myself ready for my school. I was never going to wait for a school bus because, actually, my school didn't have a school bus for day students. I'm also opportune to have my school at my backyard. This could have been a good reason for me to wake up as late as 6:30am, but Mother never allowed such to take place. She would call it laziness. No wonder she forced me to ask my grandma on my birthday for an alarm clock, the last thing I would have ever asked from her.

Mother had made me some Quaker Oats while I was busy imagining the rest of the dream(of I and Oyin) in my bathroom. How that dream had made me to fall more in love with her. Mother added a sachet of Milk and a cube of sugar, which I later added two more behind her. I wondered what sweet taste a cube of sugar would give. Nonsense. She also gave me some slices of bread to complement the oats.

When it was about 15 mins to seven, I was on the way to school walking all alone, and listening to Joeboy's "Alcohol" from my phone which I had snuck out with me. I was less bothered that they could catch me. I had unlimited hiding spaces on me and in my bag. Mother never caught me taking it to school.