“What will you like to be when you grow up?” I had been in school a month, and had within the same time span worn a miniature lawyer’s robe, surgeon’s scrub, and an overall that was a size too big and sapped the fun out of a dress-up ritual that my 4 year old self had fallen in love with from the first day. At every one of these rituals I had believed were fun exercises where we’d play roles for a day before we went back to being who we were; toddlers just trying to have fun, grown-ups had asked the whole class one after another different iterations of that question, starting first by asking it just that way, and then perhaps in a bid to direct our little minds in a line of thought that suited their purposes, they began asking it differently, in that teeny tiny singsong voice that adults like to use when talking to children, “Wouldn’t you want to be a doctor Ado, isn’t that white coat just gorgeous?” asked Mistress Aina smiling her wide brown-teethed smile. I wouldn’t, I thought, that would have meant to my 4 year old mind that every other dress-up day I would have to come as a doctor wearing the same outfit every time, and I couldn’t abide that. I loved the entirety of that ritual, from deciding with my mother’s help what profession to go as, to going to the market to get the outfit befitting that profession where available, or the fabric if otherwise, to meeting the local tailor, a dour faced old man who smiled once to every kid at the moment they walked into his shop and then fell back into his signature tightly squeezed frown for the rest of the measurement process, as if to dare the kids to, “Misbehave and find out the unpleasant side of me you little brats.” Answering yes to Mistress Aina would have meant forfeiting this long process which I dearly loved, so I held my lips tightly sealed and looked down at my sneakered feet, never once gleaning any absurdity in the fact that I was wearing a lawyer’s robe over sneakers, a fact I’d later in life come to find out is considered a travesty in the Nigerian legal cycle.
On a Monday still wet from rain the previous night, my mom had done the questioning, squatting down to meet my face at the level of hers, her perfume had enveloped my little frame while I admired the rich colors of the Ankara outfit she was wearing to work that moorning. “What will you like to be when you grow up?” she asked, I was taken aback for a breath because my momy was echoing my teacher, that moment of hesitation was long enough for her expression to shift just a bit to a knowing, “Uh huh, so Aina was right, you can’t make up your mind.” She stood to her full height and continued talking while she packed my lunchbox and draped her veil over her shoulders, a bright red shimmery thing that I yearned to run my tiny fingers over. My tiny mind was abuzz with things I had no name for, but had endless questions about, which I thought not to ask or else I might disappoint my dear mother anew. “Was she not enjoying our ritual as much as I was and she let on?” I wondered “Did I do something wrong by enjoying the ritual more than something that the grown-ups expected of me? If so, what is this something?” “What did they want?” “That I choose one thing? Or would they be okay if I said I wanted to be one thing today and another the next day?” The former certainly did not appeal to me, I wouldn’t want to wear the same outfit, and a drab white one at that, every time we played dress-up. Mother was pulling my hand towards the front door when I whispered with a lot of hesitation, “Everything?” she stopped just outside the door where our front yard, if five strides beyond one’s front door qualifies as a front yard, and looked down at me, her lipstick was smudged at one corner of her mouth, a matte black thing that made her mouth look like a separate part of her body that didn’t belong there but was moved to her face instead, “What did you say dear? I didn’t hear that.” She said, making her broken lipstick more distinct still as her open mouth revealed a paler skin of the mouth lining. “I want to be everything when I grow up Momy!” I said with a confident smile. She stared at me with a blank expression, then her lips parted again with a half grin that I will later come to associate with a silent judgement of the foolishness of others, “You know what,” she said “let us talk about it tonight, I am almost late, as are you. For now, be a good boy at school and answer “Doctor” when Mistress Aina asks you that question, for her sake, okay?” I nodded bewildered, the confident smile wiped off from my face at the realization that my momy had just blatantly asked me to lie to my teacher. I told that lie later that week, while I waited for us to have that promised talk which we never did, and by then I’d arrived at the realization that not only did my momy ask me to lie to my teacher, but she had also lied to me. She never intended to have that talk, she was just too kindly to look into my young eager eyes and say, “I want you to become a doctor, and that is final!”
Years later I still look back to those few contentious months in which I was put in a position by the adults in my life to at 4 years of age decide the trajectory of a life neither they nor myself could be sure would last past my next birthday. Everyday people die, infants and toddlers, the elderly as well as every human being within all age demography, from disease or disasters, for no reason too sometimes, death does not discriminate, so it isn’t farfetched that I could have died before my 5th birthday. But I was one of the lucky ones, I survived not only mortality’s many pitfalls but also the constant blows of the figurative mallet wielded by adults (parents and well-intentioned acquaintances alike) the world over to beat kids into the shape they have deigned in their minds fit these kids.
(This is a two-part piece by Ado. The second will be published tomorrow).