DADDY

This had been in my head since I awoke, but I had a busy day, so I couldn’t type it. By the way, it’s still Fathers’ Day here, so it’s not too late.
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When I was a five-year-old in Primary One, I didn’t know how to read properly. My father let me play during that session. But the long vacation between Primary 1 and Primary 2, he really coached me in those few months so that I learnt to read well both in English and Yoruba before resuming into Primary Two. While in Primary One, my classmates used to call me ‘olodo’ (‘olodo’ means a dullard), but in Primary 2, I became their boss in academics and they all curried my favour. I remember telling some of them when they would beg me for answers to some questions, “You people are now coming to me abi, sebi you tagged me ‘olodo’ in Primary 1?”

That was my dad’s efforts in manifestation. My dad was our (my siblings and I) first teacher. You dared not go to play when you were yet to finish the assignment he gave you. Who born monkey? He really drilled us. He taught my us to read both in English and Yoruba. He ensured we treated every exercise in all the Arithmetics, Mathematics and English textbooks we had at home. He monitored us through reading and answering questions in ‘First Aid In English’ and ‘Way To Success’ to solving problems in ‘Lacombe’. It wasn’t easy on us those days because we thought he was too harsh (though he was really too harsh at times). He made sure we read every night before we went to sleep. You couldn’t go to bed until nine, at least.

It always amuses me how some children these days take as final what their aunties or uncles (teacher) say, even when those teachers are wrong and their parents are correcting them. For me, it was the opposite. My dad always checked our notes everyday we returned from school.

One day in Primary 3, I missed some answers in an exercise. But there was a mistake in the correction my teacher put up on board, I didn’t know and copied it like that. My dad who always checked our notes after school saw the mistake and asked me to correct it. He was sure my teacher wasn’t aware of it. My mum saw the error too and confirmed it. The next day my teacher was not happy when she checked my note and she saw the alteration I made. I tried to explain to her that there was a mistake and my dad discovered it at home and asked me to correct it. She wouldn’t understand and reported me to my mum, who was a teacher in the same school. My mum tried to explain to her too. Well, whether she was satisfied or not, I knew my dad was right, and that she was wrong.

Another case was when my Primary Five class teacher marked a mathematical calculation wrong for me because I didn’t use the method she taught others during her extra-mural classes. (My dad thought it unreasonable for us to wait for lessons after school hours, so I wasn’t part of those classes. In actual fact, she didn’t teach us that topic in class, but I still answered the question and got the answer correctly because I was taught at home ahead of time by my father.) I went to show her my calculations in tears how I arrived at my answer imploring her to check my calculations, but she insisted I didn’t use the right formula. It hurt, but I let it go. I knew I was right, and that she was wrong.