I pointed it out like a firefighter’s hose smearing the wall with liquid. I bent backwards. But for the flexibility of my infantile skeleton I could have snapped. I kept bending, my shorts rolled and resting hallway between my pelvis and knees.
Dami stood beside me, anxious like an athlete waiting for the opponent's result to determine where he was on the leaderboard.
”My own is higher,” I shouted in excitement.
We laughed. Lanre my friend hung his hands on my shoulder and cheered. We were having fun. Mad fun. I had just set a new record. No one yet had peed higher. Mine touched on the white chalk that wrote “caveat emptor” on the wall. That was far higher than Dami’s. Even Dami was not as tall as my pee traveled. I was the king among us. It felt good. Really good.
Then I turned in my bed to a slight discomfort. It occurred. I sprang up to the smell of urine. I touched my short. It was wet. I touched my brother's lying next to me, hoping it was him. His was dry. Again.
The harmattan wind blew through the window and I felt very cold on the lower part of my body. I sat by the side of the bed, lost in thought what to do. Like a cat desperate to hide its poo, I scampered for a bucket and water and rag. I couldn't find a rag so I took off my shorts and soaked it in water.
I brushed the bed desperately. Every time my brother turned, I paused. The voice of my mum asking me to drink in moderation the previous night kept playing in my head. The threat that I will be laughed at in boarding school began to hunt me. I brushed even more desperately.
It was middle December and things dried up quicker. I wanted this one to dry before anyone woke up. I changed into a new shorts and laid in the couch in my room.
Then the lights came on in the corridor. It was my mum. She turned on the lights in my room too. She looked at my bed and saw the wet mark on it. She looked at me in the couch. She must have noticed I had changed my shorts. I looked away in embarrassment. Now everyone will know. The champion of the peeing competition is the villain in the real world.
“You wetted the bed again, Carl?”