Growing Up Great

From a young age age, I always felt that I was destined for greater things like, staying up past 2100 hrs., eating/drinking from my mother’s china, going to adult parties and stumbling upon Scarlet Ortiz, etc. This was the path the Universe had chosen for me, the universe because I had reservations about the all mighty administrator whose plans of everlasting utopia mostly revolved around the department of Israelites. Going to church was frustrating for me because for the life of me, I could never figure out why my mother had not figured out that the good news part was totally NOT meant for Negros from Kenya, all that plague-y shit was though.

Being the greatest in the family is not easy especially when your mother does not seem to care. I had asked nicely numerous times to be allowed to watch late-night movies and attend parties hosted by my elder sister, Lavender’s friends but for whatever reason my mother always said no so I decided to sabotage her desire to go to heaven by stealing my sister’s phone every night and loading up Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl, you see at that time, I did not have the slightest clue of the fantastical images (and videos!) that lay beyond Janet Jackson’s sunny nipple. The plan, however, did not have sufficient time to take root as the nipple and I were discovered by Lavender the next morning… awkward.

A few days later, after my suspicions were proven unfounded, I was able to re-join my friends in fucking shit up, thoroughly confident that they did not know what I did last summer…figuratively … we don’t have summers in Mombasa, Kenya but we do have seasons, just two though; the “could it just fucking rain already” season and the “whatever did we do to deserve a second biblical cataclysm season” strange names for seasons, I know, but totally legit. It would be appropriate for me to let you know that it was definitely biblical cataclysm season at that point, it had been raining all day and so my friends and I were each sat at the front door of our houses staring at each other across the rain… hopelessly, a picture worthy of background imagery hall of fame status but it was not long before the blank expressions turned into devilish smiles. 

African mothers have a thing against the rain, being outside while it rained was strictly forbidden (even in raincoats) oh but today our mothers were not home, they had gathered at some church lady’s house, probably plotting to raid a tea leaves factory or something, seriously, Negros have been shunned and shamed for not serving tea during unexpected “neighbourly” visits. Meanwhile, the lot of us had already made our way to an old abandoned and unfinished building about 500 meters (that’s about 0.310686 miles in Americanish) from our neighbourhood, rain meant a ridiculous amount of delicious wild fruits we call ‘Kunazi’ in Swahili, we collected the ‘kunazi’ in our short pockets and also folded the hems of our t-shirts to our accommodate more. Walking merrily in the rain, not a care in the world… well, only for a few seconds because in the misty distance stood large figures, it did not take us a while to immediately figure out whom the figures belonged to, it was every mini negro for him/herself as the figures descended upon us with the wrath of the Titans (not Olympians because they were our parents….see what I did there?)

My very short life flashed across my mind as my mother approached me menacingly, she had cornered me and thus I accepted my fate, I let go of the hem of my shirt and some of the kunazi fell from it, she caught me by the ears and read me the riot act all the way home. It was cold outside but my ears burned with a “fiercesomeness”, my butt hurt like hell but my greatness was still intact, no amount of wooden spoon related assault and battery was going to put me down. I would live to defy another day… preferably in a week or two, wooden spoons hurt like hell fam.