A CHERISHED CHILDHOOD MEMORY
An embedded memory.
One day, I will look at this post and either cry or smile to myself or both.
If I hadn’t started reading books, I wouldn’t be writing today. I didn’t start out of the bloom. I was surrounded by family and friends who loved reading and it helped unlock this talent.
It began way back in JSS 1, my friend - let’s call her Jean - initiated me to the reading culture.
Jean is a Ghanaian brown-skin beauty with a fierce spirit and a sharp attitude. Her hair was the longest I’d seen then. She has the bright eyes of a Sanguine and squeal for a laughter. Jean never saw obstacles and would always fight her way through. I was the cautious one, she was the adventurous one. We knew each other thanks to attending the same primary school, church and our mothers’ friendship. She’s my childhood friend.
On entering secondary school, as the bookie that I was? am? -never mind, it doesn’t matter anyway- I was set on acing my scores and making my parents proud. I knew no other life apart from the academic one.
Thankfully, Jean was the opposite. She lived life in an unbelievably jovial manner. How can someone be carelessly happily dragging her feet on dusty sand while walking? How do just eat your provision without considering if you’d survive the entire term? I mean, what girl scrapes her plate after eating beans? You see, till now, I didn’t realize how much she changed my uptight perspective on life. She lived her life in the moment. Abeg, let the future take care of itself, I will do even better.
I can’t recall when I first saw her with a novel but I can not forget the zeal with which she read. Jean can search for the tiniest ray of light to read with even if it was from a firefly. She would read deep into the night and go to bed late and read early in the morning while waiting for me. Sometimes, she’d read while walking. Any spare nanosecond was for reading.
I soon joined in this new-found obsession. We shamelessly stole books from anywhere and usually got into trouble for it. When the trouble subsided, we were back at it. The cycle commenced again. We would have a competition of who to finish reading her book first. As a speedy reader, she always won. I began to read as much as she did such that we’d read the ingredients of the snacks we ate. We’d be eating and reading in a dining hall fill with hundred of students. We’d argue about what was wrong or right in the book and which character was to blame or had it all.
Hello o? I am not referring to school books. I mean any book that is not “school book”.
I experienced joy with this girl. We’d pluck almond fruits together, steal books lying idle, get into fights for the other party, even snitch on anyone who tried to conspire or form gang with one of us or try to turn us against each. Of course, we had our own fights as a couple.
One of our favorite talks were usually about the boys in the school. The ones we believed were crushing on us and the ones we shamelessly crushed on. Her description of boys was strangely apt. Lol! She usually made emphasis on the shape and colour of their lips. We loved to catch them staring. She’d be like, “Uche, XYZ has been staring at you since. Jesus! See how he’s seriously staring at you” and the dock in me would be beaming. The best part was when the boy turned and two hormonal teenagers would ‘eye-lock’. Jean would say, “I looked back and gbim! Our eyes jammed.” I have to confess, as at JSS2, we didn’t know ‘asking out’ was a thing. We were perfectly fine with the stares and ‘eye-locking’ the guys who later conversed with us yet never dated.
During exam period, Jean WILL STILL read novels. She didn’t care what people thought about that. My parents warned me. Even other friends and classmates did. “This girl is not serious,” they would lament. Being a fearful Phlegmatic, I tried to stay away from her- for the sake of my academics and to please these people.
I’m not sure what made us to remain strong friends but I’m glad we still went on strong. We were never in the same class and even when we were eventually assigned to different hostels, she’d come and spend her day with me in my hostel. My hostel mates knew us. Seniors knew us. Juniors knew us. Our peers knew us. We still went to the dining halls and reading hours together.
“Uche, I’m going back to Ghana.” We had just rounded up JSS3 and I thought it was just for the holidays.
I resumed SSS1 to series of, “Uche, where is Jean?”
Overtime it escalated into, “Uche, is Jean coming back?”
Everybody was asking questions and I was getting more irritated than lonely.
Seniors asked. Juniors asked. My classmates asked. Even teachers asked.
I must have cried. It was a significant change for me.
As I finished SSS3, I began to wonder what my life would have been like if I had experienced teenagehood with Jane.
I still wish I had hugged her tight into my body when her mother scolded her - “Go and hug your friend na!” - the day she came to my house to say goodbye on the morning she left for her country. Strangely, she was wearing her uniform.
We reconnected four years her departure via Whatsapp. My shock was shook when the strange number replied those two romantic words, “It’s Jean.” How she got my number is no mystery to me.
Our friendship is not as it used to be when we were children but it is not dead. We hail each other once in a blue moon and stay updated.
We haven’t seen each other physically for more than a decade now. She has gone further than Ghana.
With her, I experienced more than friendship. She may not know this but I’m fine with it.
I do not care if this is mushy.
I love you, Jean.
I am glad I met you.
JSS - Junior Secondary School
SSS - Senior Secondary School
