Image by TréVoy Kelly from Pixabay
I remember growing up under my parents roof as a teenager, I had strict parents especially my mum.
My mum was a woman who wanted her children to be an example to others in the community. she tried her best to bring us up in a Godly way.
We were sent to a good private primary school and because of her strict guidance and monitoring I and my sister won a scholarship to study in the best secondary school in our community.
We were her pride, other parents used us as an example to their children, despite the fact that we were from a poor background, people respected us a lot,and my mum was a proud mother.
She has set boundaries for us, we were never permitted to taste alcohol but what she didn't know was that every time we spend our holiday in grandma's place, we had liberty to taste alcohol because my grandma was a dealer in local gin. She will make us have a taste and it was all fun.
Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay
During my time in secondary school, I didn't have such friends who encouraged drinking alcohol.we were all good girls and non of them had any influence on me.
In fact, I was the group leader, I shared topics to be covered by each person during exam and each person had to present her topic just before exam commences.
I was not the type that read at home.This, my group didn't know about me. I only read on the exam morning.
I pretended to be reading a lot of times during prep classes because we were being monitored, and there was no way you could sleep without being noticed.
If you are caught sleeping you will be punished and I didn't want that, so I always did it my way, stay focused and turn pages without actually looking at words.
I go to my fantasy world, and perform all kinds of activities. Have fun in my head and thought of what the future holds for m
I could remember one time I had to feign illness just to avoid mathematics class, I was made to swallow a drug because I told them my belly was paining.
My friends had no idea of my tricks because I did very well in my exams and they relied on me most times for answers.
I gained admission into the university and met new friends and lovely roommates.
There was this one time a roommate was to celebrate her birthday.
We all dressed up, went out to celebrate and cheer with her. The party was in a club, I have never been to a club,that was my first and last actually.
The party kicked off, and we were on the dance floor, random guys joined in and bought drinks, everybody went wild as some started smoking.
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I was still sitting and sipping from my bottle when Gift a friend of mine dragged me to my feet. "Chioma stand up and dance" she said, I decided to dance a little before going back to my seat, but then I started feeling weak, my eyes were heavy as though I was falling asleep.
I couldn't see clearly as I was seeing everyone in two, I had to rub my eyes as if to clean it off but my sight didn't get better. it downed on me that I was beginning to get drunk.
I managed to go back to my seat and sat down all through till the party ended, that was the first time I actually drank beer. We all had fun and headed back to the hostel.
This part of me my mum and siblings never got to know.
It is buried deep and now reflecting on these things just makes me laugh out loud.