Return to Innocence-Chapter One

I have decided to move. I’m returning to Innocence. Days of yore when all my seven year old head needed to worry about was whether or not my father was going to come back home with a BATA Cortina or some other shoe that I was going to cry about for weeks.

Back then, that was my definition of the fine line between a disaster and a crisis. You see, half the children in my class at the time came to school in shiny brown Cortina and spotless (for the first few weeks anyway) white socks.

So far, the only reason why I hadn’t been banished to the other half the classroom- which was the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth reserved for the “unfortunate ones” whose parents just couldn’t be bothered to “buy best, buy BATA”- was because I was a precocious child, and had the good sense to preserve my nomination as ‘teacher’s pet’ early on, every school term.

It was a position I guarded jealously, my life depended on it. I’ve seen how that shiny, invisible badge of honor bought me a lot of favors and protection from bullies and other childhood terrors like banishment from the IN crowd.

But I knew being teacher’s pet couldn’t protect me for long, especially not when you have to walk around in mud-blood shoes in a playground filled with true-blood BATA wearing wiz kids. What can I say?

Playground would soon turn into killing ground if any child; teacher’s pet or no- dares to enter third week of school term in any shoes but Cortina.
It wasn’t so much and issue of what was the vogue as it was about conforming.

As far as I was concerned, the things looked like boats on land anyway, but these were only thoughts I had in the privacy of the dark corners in my head sha o! No one dared say such decidedly TABOO things out loud you know?

So, I move back to innocence. My time machine is set for the Saturday evening my father will come home with a pair of school shoes.
God knows I had prepared him often enough in my shrill seven year old voice; “baba ni” (my version of “Baba Mi” -My Father- the endearment my siblings and I used for the old sweetheart), our teacher says we have to use Cortina or she wont let us into her class. She wants her class to win the prize for best dressed children…” on another occasion; “Baba ni, it has to be brown Cortina, like the one that shade has and Uchenna and Binta…”
His responses had been non-committal so, I was worried sick on this particular Saturday.

I remember being too nervous to eat. My mother had made the Saturday afternoon lunch special; goat stew, plain okra soup (you’ll remember this if you are Yoruba), and Lafun (the sort you make from scratch) to go with it. I couldn’t eat. My ears were trained for one car with plate number KD 1212AC (weird how I can still remember the plate number huh?)

Soon enough, I heard the sound I’d been listening out for, and bolted off the table, sending plates and red stew flying in every direction…

This trip to the past just made me finally realize why I love my father to bits.
He averted a disaster when I needed him most.
He got me a pair of shiny brown Cortina.