I was in my third year in highschool when the situation demanded that I change schools. The timing of taking such a decision was so short that my grandfather whom I left my parents to stay with and as a result changed school wasn't able to sew the school uniform for me before resuming. He sent my uncle to talk to the school authority to allow me to use my former school's uniform for a week before sewing the appropriate uniform which they agreed.
My former school's uniform was a blue shirt over an ash-colored knicker. I entered the class the first day and I wasn't really happy with the way I was odd among the students.
The first subject we had that morning was Mathematics. The teacher came in and started the class and he soon got to the stage of asking us the students questions.
I was still acclimatizing myself with the environment which made me keep quiet despite knowing the answer to some of the questions. I was watching the mode of interaction between the teacher and the students.
A question was asked and about four students raised their hands. The teacher looked beyond the raised fingers to call on me to answer the question.
"The man in blue," answer the question
I looked back, front and sideways to be sure that it was only me putting on blue.
"Stand up. I am referring to you." The teacher pointed at me.
I stood up and answered the question correctly and that was the genesis of my nickname, man in blue.
I didn't take it seriously initially. I thought the name was going to fade away especially when I got the appropriate uniform and did away with the blue shirt but my classmates made it stick to me for the rest of my stay in the school and beyond.
I didn't like the dimension that it was taken at a point and I told whoever called me the name to stop calling me man in blue. I felt that it was crazy and confusing to continue calling someone man in blue irrespective of the color of the shirt that he is putting on. The more I asked them to stop it, the more they intensified calling me by the nickname.
Something happened that made me resign to fate and accept the name. A group of the school's alumni organized a Mathematics competition for the students in the upper classes. We wrote the test and when the results were released, I came top.
On the day of giving out awards to the best three students, I was called out to collect a token of 40000 naira prize for the first position. As I stepped out to collect the envelope, the whole audience which was made up of the majority of students shouted man in blue.
They kept repeating it to the extent that the MC paused to ask the bearer of the name. Seeing how happy and enthusiastic the students were in calling me by the nickname, the MC joined them by asking the man in blue to come and get his prize.
That was how the nickname that was initially popular in my class and by extension school found its way to the community. Students from other schools and even adults started referring to me as man in blue.
The story that follows the nickname each time someone is telling another about how they got to know about the name made me comfortable with it. It was always accompanied with the news of the events where I was awarded the prize for the Mathematics competition.
I left the school and community after a few years. It's fascinating to note that my classmates of those days still call me by the nickname.
Since 2005 that I left the community, many people still refer to me as man in blue any time I visit.
