The One-hit Wonder I Used to Be

Back in those days when I was still the same size as our goat and when our cockerel had fallen in love with pecking my little ears after chasing me the whole front and backyard I used to be a clever little boy. I used to be the best in my class. I even set a record where one exam I got eight straight A's in my exams, scoring 800 out of 800 marks. I was good I tell you. I remember those days and wonder if I become a fool as I approach my grave, I really do. I wonder what happened to that magic I used to have. I was known more than Okonkwo was in those nine villages of Umuofia. I was known in our district as the only boy who could get nothing but straight A's if he saw that as necessary. But that, like I said, was a long time ago.

Last week I attended a Closing Day meeting at my little brother's school. He certainly did not follow my footsteps and surely only he knows what he is following. He has been performing so poorly that he has changed schools more than any one of us in our family. So in the meeting, as they called the names of those who had performed best, and the most improved I was carried back to those meetings we usually had in high school. And I remembered just how Mama felt when they were calling the best performed students and I was not among them, like it used to be when I was in primary school. She, my mama, had great hopes in me. What made me recall those days most is the fact that my mama is usually so emotional. You should see her, for instance, watch her favourite soaps. She is usually totally involved. I do not like watching a movie in front of her because half the time I watch her, and I understand what is going on in the screen all the same. This is not to mean that my mother and I share common tastes in movies; soaps are not my type – but that is the way it is. So I used to wonder how she felt as we sat on those pews in the hall and they called the names of those fellows who had decided that books were their everything. Mama used to get the butterflies, if you can get them at such a situation, when a name like mine was mentioned, expecting me to be the most improved or something, no matter the class they were calling. I would steal glances secretly to watch her reactions, which like I said are usually overt, only to find her doing the same after which I would withdraw them faster than a Kenyan can run.

I only came back to that meeting after I realised that I should not have been feeling so bad about my brother whereas I was something like a one-hit wonder. . .