Like many other people on the streets around me, I was not content. Life had offered me the same chances of survival as most normal people, with fully formed limbs and intact mental faculties. I started walking at 8 months, and being a frisky fellow, the typical process of crawling to standing didn’t apply to me. I went straight from “drag-belly on the floor” to “grab anything that stands” and so forth.
My mom said they were having lunch when I suddenly sprung up off the floor and started racing around the living room. I can imagine them laughing, my parents, a happy couple back then. Nobody said having kids was easy, and my mother was living proof of that. Three kids down and counting was no joke, and she had a ‘mummy-tummy’ to prove it. She later told me, when I was old enough to understand, that she almost lost me at birth. I still remember freezing for an instant, reflecting on my 15 odd years.
Back then, the realization that fate allowed me to survive this long didn’t feel like much, especially since I had no interest in writing an autobiography someday (although I did know what an autobiography was back then). Yet, somehow, I felt a sense of foreboding, like a shadow crept over a corner of my visage and disappeared in an instant. There were many cares of my youth, many roads not taken, and this enlightening information was nothing compared to what I saw around me.
Still, I was not shaken. Life was good, time was ample, and like my peers, I was revved up and roaring to go. Secondary school was far from pleasant, but somehow I survived. A lot had changed since the good old days our folks kept moaning about. Back then, food was cheap, and you were bound to get tired of eating. Somehow, there was always a freebie at weekends, something to take your mind off being away from family for extended periods. Some of us thought little of their moaning, but they did little or nothing to alleviate the pains we knew firsthand.
But in six years, it was all over. The world grew bigger, and so did my jeans. The first week at the University left me bored because it wasn’t close to anything I expected. The term ‘Ivory Tower’ suggests grandiose scales, high language, deep thinking, hardworking, and hard playing. Now, is it just me, or does everything I see cry out ‘decaying, outdated, in need of upgrades, or complete abandonment’? My six-year experience in a melting pot had prepared me somewhat for what the next five years offered, a varied experience that was somewhat sweet-sour. I believe the term ‘half-baked’ is thrown around a little too loosely now. Methinks certificates should have an addendum that says ‘THANKS FOR TRYING’ after the degree awarded.
I don’t mean to be cynical, honestly. We are built tough around these parts, and like diamonds in the dirt, we shine, mostly, or get caught up in the shadows that ferry unwilling souls to the great beyond or whichever other place they believe we end up when this body quits the drudgery of everyday struggle.
We were literally tossed out with little more than street smarts and sterling recommendations. And the world beckoned, in more ways than one, to us all, fresh from the form factory. Banks, factories, television houses, infirmaries, police checkpoints (both legal and not so legal). And there were barbershops, other higher institutions, morgues, pulpits, shacks beneath bridges, gas stations, motor parks, and dark corners in filthy streets or deserted highways. The list is endless and long enough to make a career out of it. Hell, I made a career out of it. And what a career it has been.
I remember the high times when writer’s cramp and coffee were like twins doing a tango, long weekends with days that seemed to blur between the lines. And Sunday night always seemed not to be part of the week because the only memory left of it by Monday morning was sour breath and drool stains on a couch.
I got jostled by a passerby, but I was too caught up in my musings to care. Even better, I didn’t care. You could never be too careful these days. Who knows if that harmless-looking passerby was a violent time bomb waiting to happen, and you were the trigger.
A loud report, probably from the poor exhaust pipe of some half-alive bus, stopped me dead center, and I felt a slight twitch in my stomach. But time led me on, and the passing figures all melded into one blur of motion, a myriad of colours, smells (mostly unpleasant or questionable), and sensations that were a constant reminder that the senses I was blessed with still worked just fine, or as fine as I hoped they did.
The memory of my last medical exam seemed to find its place in the myriad. Languidly, I basked in it, soaking the essence of life in all its richness. I can almost taste it now, life, salty-sweet and somewhat coppery. I take another whiff, and it feels like a hit of something strong I’ve never had. I’m waiting to exhale but wanting to relish every atom slowly becoming part of me. However, I cannot do so much longer because my reverie is interrupted by an excited squeak. I am almost jolted out of my thoughts, but I exhale and open my eyes.
She calls me “baba.” Sometimes it’s hard to figure out if she knows I’m her grandfather or if the word is just another sashaying loner in the jumble of saliva-soaked letters endlessly roaming her still-growing mind.
Yesterday, she grabbed the TV remote out of my hands and, after staring hard at it for more than a minute, returned it to me wordlessly, then dropped back to the floor and crawled away, cackling like an old hag. Her limbs were still rounded like little umbrellas, and her movements were jerky, as if she was on a constant electrocution high.
I smiled at the memory, and I felt warmth coursing through me, spreading like a film of oil on lint. I had seen time through my eyes and shared the same through words with countless people. But sometimes I could never really see because age had robbed me of the understanding. She was new time; I was old time. Still, intersections like ours were only made in part, there one moment and gone the next.
Some people say your life flashes before you just before you die. I wonder. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll get to see a future like I did, or maybe not.
A bullet could tell.
Read – Forward Agenda – A Short Story by Abíọ́dún Abdul, Nigeria
This is… bittersweet
Aaaaaaaaaaaw. Appreciate the comment. I am working on writing more.