Down memory lane…Some time back a friend of mine reminded me of a tale about my little brother…I have two younger brothers and both have been thoroughly spoilt by my mum as at some point they have been lastborns. The actual lastborn was born when my family was what you would call comfortable and there was hired help to do whatever he may need. So it was to our shock and amusement when my father regaled us with a very surprising scene he had come across in my brothers room. At that time my brother was about 10 years old. Apparently he convinced the help to allow him to sleep in the morning with his hands and feet up in the air so that the help could oil and dress him for school…my father saw this bizarre scene twice silently without my brother’s knowledge. We could not believe our ears. In any case I was really shocked that he would be comfortable with such a thing…of all the nonsense in the world! Of course as usual my mother rushed to his defence saying he was so young…her ‘baby’…of course that just allowed my father, my other brother and I the opportunity to make fun of him calling all babyish names…which annoyed my mother to no end..but no one could reason with her as regards spoiling my brother or show her how ridiculous it was for such  a grown up child(Oxymoron?) to be dressed and more so in bed! The picture my dad painted had us all laughing including the culprit himself…Those were good days for my family…it was such incidences that had us all rallying for my small brother to go to boarding school for two years. I must say he completed his terms yesterday and he is much more independent no thanks to my mum who actually cried when we  took him to school.

 

Talking of boarding schools….My brother went to one just a few kilometers from us hence we would visit as frequently and the facilities were up to standard. I was talking to another friend of mine about the mad bomber series in Passive aggressive Notes when I informed him that for one year while in Primary(elementary school) I went to boarding school in a very remote part of the country. I was very young though at the time I considered myself very grown up. My mother says I was born independent that if I could have crawled from my womb I would have 9 months notwithstanding. Three of my cousins were already at that school and so each time they visited I begged my parents to let me join them and eventually they gave in figuring my two older cousins would take care of me while the other one who was my age would keep me company and in any case I had proved quite a survivor in my few years or so my dad would have me believe. The tales of that school could keep a blog running for quite some years but one I want to share is as regards this young girl who we should call Sally. She turned out to be a mad bomber of some sort. This story has some gross details so ye of weak constitutions walk away.

 

Sally as with the rest of us fourth graders was 10 years or there about in this Catholic school(aka hellhole in the middle of nowhere) run by militant nuns who felt no remorse in caning us silly. All fourth graders slept in this long dorm in double-decker beds. Across from our dorm was a graveyard for sisters who had passed away and near it was this huge tree and many a tale was spun as regards the ghosts and spirits which would hover near it. Inside the dorm was one loo which was only supposed to be used for a short call and if anyone needed to do a number two they would have to brave the dark night past the graves to the other end to find the pit latrines. After hearing all the skin crawling tales no one ever dared to. The nuns shut down the electricity immediately we were in our dorms after prep classes at night. The background has been set. So in comes in Sally. Her grandmother passed away and she went for the funereal and as per custom there was food galore which she took full advantage seeing as at school food was a precious commodity. On her return to school she found that the provincial drama festivals which also meant more food and the little girl pigged her face out. That night it seemed her stomach finally revolted at the quantity and mix of food it had to endure and in the cover of darkness sally decided to perform a performance worthy of an Oscar. Sally slept in the last bed which was like closest to the bathroom but she decided for some, bizarre reason to run right to the centre of the room in darkness and squatted there and unloaded her meals then proceeded to run across the room unloading more of her meals to cap it all spraying the whole loo like the MAD BOMBER. Note all this occurred while we slept like lambs. At this point the plot thickens as two characters join in. Let’s call them Stella and Joan. These two were best friends and bunkmates. So as common practice among females , when one needs to go to the loo they are accompanied by their friends and so these two decided to brave the darkness and run across the big dorm to reach the loo. Incidentally they were barefoot. Only to encounter a big squishy wet trail on the way there and the smell was so awful and so they started screaming waking up the whole dorm. Most of us had flashlights and soon the horror that was sally’s waste was revealed. Awake, the smell was so awful and the sight so disgusting we could not imagine w e had slept through it. Joan and Stella were near tears with rage at the sight of their feet covered in excrement at 2am in the morning. Of course no one fessed up and so they decided to do a search which involved everyone getting off from their bed and stripping while the two sniffed. Now I sounds ludicrous but at the time it made sense and we were so innocent..ironically Sally was the last one to be inspected and she was refusing to get out of her bed…but she underestimated the power of two enraged girls who have sh*t on their feet.  They pulled her out of her bed and did their sniff test but more incriminating was the soiled panty found under her pillow. Disgusting does not begin to describe the whole tale. To everyone’s disappointment we could not give her a beating as the nuns would have whipped up to our graves but the tongue lashing that girl got till 5am when we could go shower, I am sure to this day her ears still ring. The nuns did whip her and punish in front of the whole school. In hindsight perhaps the school should have had better facilities after all she was only ten years old. Now I can laugh about it but that night we were all in a rage wondering why she would do such a thing but it seems some people carry the behavior into adulthood…I wonder if its mischief or just Psychological sickness…