There is a common saying in my hometown that states that" it takes a whole village to train a child" and this is often practiced in Nigeria, a child is expected to obey his or her elders, and every adult has a kind of special right to train a child irrespective of whether you are his biological parent or not.
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One encounter that changed my life was when I was in high school, also known as secondary in my country, right from my Junior secondary class 1, I was very fond of carrying all my school books both exercise and big textbooks, all at once in my school bag, to and fro to school, imagine those heavy textbooks and we were offering about nine subjects at that time, even though we didn't make use of all the books daily and had a time-table to follow, I always made sure to carry all of my books, my mum would tell me to drop some of the textbooks at home, but I still hid and took them along with me, Monday to Friday and some weekends when we had special classes.
I continued this habit for about 2 years not knowing carrying a heavy load daily on my back was affecting me, I remembered always having chest pain, but never thought it was due to my habit, my mum took me to the hospital and they were suggesting sicknesses with huge names I haven't heard before, gave me some drugs and told my mum to bring me back for more examination if the pain persisted.
The encounter
I was on my way back from school one day with my heavy school bag backed, when a woman who should be in her early 50s stopped me with my friends, we were worried as to why a stranger would stop us when we didn't commit any crime, she apologized with a calm voice and advised us to stop carrying heavy bags, using her 18 years old son as an example, she narrated to us how he has spoilt his posture and has a bent backbone which makes him not able to stand straight, and according to her, it was caused due to this very habit of carrying heavy backpacks, and he also suffers from chest pain, after listening to her, I felt sorry for her son, and we all
promised to yield to her advice, right from then henceforth, I stopped carrying heavy school bags and only filled my school bag with necessary books, not all anymore.
That very advice helped change my perspective as a girl then, growing to a lady, that I should learn to be conscious of myself, and my posture and also not take advantage of my youthfulness to overwork my young body, because as we get older those sides of our body we tell on us with time, the reason why we have some elderly suffer from some pain in some parts of their body, especially joints, due to wear and tear after prolonged usage, I hope we young ones learn from this very as a advice, enjoy your youth, but don't push yourself to the extreme.
