Out of nowhere, she'd just say to me, "My most loved." Didn't click for a few seconds the first time until I remembered that I had just told her about how I was ranked Most Hated in my final year in secondary school. Then I'd go, "Come on, Mom. That was like a decade ago!"
With no navy officers and teachers in the block, SS3 boys were always bound to use their extended night preps for play at some point. As long as we hadn't started exams yet, reading until 12 midnight all the way from about 7 pm was just the commandant's own fantasy.
The clowns in the class would break out at some point, and the serious ones would just watch, while the class captain stands against or with us. Either way, things get rowdy at some point without an officer or two with a horsewhip. And then someone came up with a not-so-random idea to give awards one night.
He knew it would get to me. Petty things easily got to me then. And so the plan was to turn the entire class against me and have me break. When it came to the Most Hated category, a lot of people voted for Olujay. Jeez. "But how come?" I wondered in my mind with pain in my heart.
In reality, it wasn't true. Of course I wasn't the most hated amongst a set of 150 students. It wasn't even a real thing. Maybe a couple of people didn't like me, but they all knew... They knew that such a thing like that would get to me, and they wanted entertainment anyway. I had friends on my side, for sure, but thirty fingers [in class B] against three was just crazy.
But why would they even do that? Well, it's for simple things, really. I was funny kid then. Pretty much reactive. And in a boy's military school like mine, no bullshit attitude. You had to be tough, or you got broken.
Had my stuff stolen a couple of times, for example, although that was normal for everyone else then. But just because one guy felt I was ungenerous, he'd hide one half of my pair of sandals on top of the wardrobe. I sometimes retaliated and hid his shirt or something, but that just started a war I couldn't win.
I had walked into that school soft and a bit unwise, and so it was pretty rough on most days. I had become much different when I left, but I just pulled away from my colleagues right after we graduated. Got used to it, then a decade passed and I forgot why I never said anything in the group chat.
Reminiscing about that day and sharing it with my mother was how she somehow felt the need to always remind me that I'm loved. I just find it hilarious anytime she does, though, because that really was such a long time ago and a tiny, weeny bit of the whole experience there. There were cold nights of punishment and there was the joy of marching to the military drumlines every morning, carrying wooden rifles.
Image in this post belong to me
