What's my favourite memory? Day 4 Challenge

"Every time you miss your childhood, ride on a bicycle!"

-Mehmet Murat İldan.

Yesterday was children's day in Nigeria and it's something I want to talk to you about for the day 4 Gratitude Challenge. Children celebrating their day on the 27th brought beautiful memories to me as a once a child and I couldn't stop smiling remembering them.

My favourite memory is when I was a child. There are many things I have done as a child and I want to thank my parents for bringing me into the world as the second child. I woke up at 4 am to do some things and I was reading @Kushyzee's article. It made me smile as I flashback to the past and how I and the other children enjoyed the moment. I will tell you some of what I did as a child and how some came to turn me into who I am today.

PLAYING WITH OTHER KIDS

One thing about me then was that I love to be the leader of all activities and the other children would cooperate with me. I have always been the one dragging my siblings into the rain and we would play. Our parents never shouted at us though but left us to play. There are times we would use paper to make a boat, and seeing the boat floating and moving in the rain makes us happy.

While involved in roleplaying, I would be the one sharing roles and scenes with other kids. I am always the mother with a plastic baby doll as my baby is tied to my back. We would find tins and add much sand into them. One would be for rice, another for solid food, depending on what we are eating for the play. We use our room when mom and dad have gone out and when we are through, I will make sure we all sweep everywhere and make it neat before our parents come back.

Our parents, though, were strict, but they still gave us the freedom to play with other children but would give us a particular time we should come in, especially at night. Starting from 7 pm after eating dinner, we would be given an hour to play and everyone would rush out to call our friends to play "Hide and Seek". There is a staircase in our compound, that was our usual spot and a perfect place to hide under the stairs as there were different hiding places and one wouldn't be easily located since it's dark and there wouldn't be light then. We enjoyed that moment with many more fun activities like playing in the sand, after round one, original panadol extra...I know many Nigerians born at that time would know this. Others like Tenten, rubber playing, suwe games, who is in the garden and so on.

STEALING MOM'S MONEY

When we were growing up and I was in Primary School then. I had a best friend who was the same age as me and in the same class. Her mom sells bread while mine sold Nylon. They both were together and every day they will sell massively. My mom was a popular Nylon maker and seller then and people will rush to her to get some for their businesses. We never lacked even though we aren't that rich but we lived happily.

The money that was always given to me and my siblings wasn't always enough and my friend and I teamed up together to start stealing a small amount of money from our mothers' purses so we could add to the money being given to us every morning. There was the food canteen woman who sells a very delicious meal around the school and we were always looking forward to eating in the morning at her place before going to school and that was our plan of taking the money. We just want to eat and form big girls with a lot of money.

As of then, when you use #100 ($0.1) to buy food and meat, you are already enough and should last you hours before thinking of what to eat in the afternoon. On Sundays, with the money we stole, we would buy some clothes and trousers for #50 each and they were always good. Mom would wonder where we got money from and I quickly tell her it was the money given to us every morning to school since we don't spend it 😅😅

This moment too was fun. My best friend should still be alive by God's grace and I wish to set my eyes on her again. I can say that was the only girl I had as a best friend, my partner in petty stealing 🤣

DAD'S GIRL EVERYWHERE

I have always been tagged as Dad's girl everywhere including in school. For all the schools I attended right from Kindergarten to my Senior Secondary School, Dad has never missed a day checking on us except for days he travelled. He wasn't someone who goes to the office every morning, he was an instrumentalist and musician. So, he only goes out when he has an event to play. Mom was a trader and she didn't know our school but at least one of them made it a priority to visit us to see what we were up to.

People wondered how he has always been consistently checking on his children and he was awarded the best parent who keeps coming to visit us during one of the Parents Teachers Association meetings. My Dad tried for us then and I am so proud to have him. Whenever he shows up in school, all pupils will shout "Busayo your dad has come". He was always the first parent to arrive whenever there is a meeting or any event which makes him respected among all teachers and principals. He became the permanent musician for events that took place in the school.

MY FIRST EARNINGS AS A CHILD

I should have written this on Hive but I couldn't then, I will just summarize. When I finished Junior Secondary School, before school resumed for Senior Secondary School, I had in mind to start a little business because I got the idea from my mom. She gave me some money for a start. I went to buy packets of sweets, biscuits, chewing gum, goody-goody, chocolates with sticks etc and was selling them in my mom's shop. I was always looking forward to having a customer on the first day which made me sad because I didn't understand things were in step then. The next day, I had only a child as a customer, then my siblings were the next even though they stole much of my stuff which I would cry to report to Dad and he would pay me back.

I started doing Nutri C, which comes in different flavours (Coke and Fanta) and our freezer was very good. In minutes, everything in it would get iced and people patronized me so well. My siblings would always steal some to drink, I would complain but they wouldn't stop.

That was when I realized what goes around will come around... I used to steal mom's money but didn't know how it felt but someone was doing it to me, I felt it. Lol

The business was what made me determined to be independent because mom taught me so. She never depended on Dad's money except he gave to her and that didn't stop her from preparing meals on the table. Let me stop here because I have a lot of childhood memories.

Thanks for reading

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May 28, 2022] (No 148 articles for the year)