I just couldn't wait to be an adult. Every time I celebrated my birthday, it was with glee knowing fully well that I was gradually getting older. I would sit up and count how many more years would get me to 16. A 16-year-old in the States was an adult so I thought it would apply to Nigeria too.
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My childhood was the most eventful experience I ever had. As of then, I didn't want the drama that came with my childhood; I didn't want to spend the entire Christmas holiday in my mother's family house in Lagos with her 6 sisters and their children. Two of their children already had 2 other children as well. It was a big family.
I also didn't want to head over to the music school my father enrolled us in without our consent. There was this Saturday when we were bored at home so my siblings and I took out a football and began to play with ourselves.
When we saw my father's car drive in, we were too excited to run downstairs to greet him so we stayed by the door instead. We waited for almost 10 full minutes and when he finally showed up he only answered our shrieks of “Daddy welcome!” with a tight-lipped smile.
We all knew something was wrong yet we couldn't place our hands on it. Just as we were whispering about the possible reasons my father could be upset at us, he emerged from his room with a towel tied around his waist and knotted loosely at the ends.
We all stood at attention as he began to speak.
“I understand that you people are children but being a child doesn't necessarily make you less wise than an adult is, it only makes you less mature, and that is only to an extent.” I shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. I didn't understand why my father suddenly returned and began to motivate us.
“I understand that you can be bored here alone, especially since your mother is unavailable every weekend but please, don't ever play football upstairs again”
We all turned to look at one another. Only a few weeks back, my father was the same person who chided us for leaving our house to someone else's compound just to play football. The next day, he bought our football for us, so what was he saying now?
“The neighbors called me to complain that every time you children play the ball from here, first it sounds like their houses would fall on them….” I don't know what happened but all of my siblings burst into laughter. My father gave that thin-lipped smile again till our laughter was reduced to chuckles. “It's not funny kids. They were bitter about it. They said the next time you children do that, they would ensure that they came up here to seize the ball”
There came another round of exchanging glances.
“So henceforth, no more football” he took the ball away and the next Saturday, asked us to prepare to go out with him. We all thought he was taking us on a date, not until he drove into the compound of the music school.
Apart from not wanting to spend all my holidays in a rowdy family house and go for music lessons, there were so many other reasons I wanted to be an adult.
I wanted to be able to read any kind of novel I liked. Once I picked up a book to read and my older sister snatched it away from me.
“It's not for children,” she said and sauntered off proudly, and she was only 8 years older than I was.
I also wanted to be able to live alone.
My family is a relatively large one so growing up, if one boy was not in the girls' room saying or doing something mischievous, it would be the other boy doing it. I have always loved my space from childhood but having a big family always prevented me from having that.
I could sneak off to the girls' room to get something or do something, or just be by myself and the next thing would be two raps at the door with someone poking their head into the room to say, “Treasure, mummy is calling you” and when I went over to meet her she would say something like,
“Why are you not out here with your siblings? What's bothering you?”
And for all those times that she asked, I didn't have an answer even once. I would just head over to join my siblings in whatever it was they were doing. It is probably the reason one person cannot make an important decision without the rest of the family's consent or opinions. We were raised to stand together at all times.
Now that I am an adult, I must admit that it has been a roller coaster. On some days I wish I was back to my childhood because I had no responsibilities then, but on some other days I was grateful that I could stay on my own, attend only classes I really wanted to attend and do whatever I chose, and there is no one at all, not one, to question me.
