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    The Day I Will Never Forget
    The Day I Will Never Forget
    The Day I Will Never Forget
    Ebook115 pages1 hour

    The Day I Will Never Forget

    By Sharon Abimbola Salu

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    About this ebook

    Ezekiel's homework assignment is quite simple: write an English composition, otherwise known as an essay, on the topic "The Day I Will Never Forget." There's only one problem: Ezekiel has no idea what to write. Why? Because the life of this 6 year old boy has been a series of very ordinary, forgettable days.


    But when his class teacher, the meticulous, rabbit-loving Miss Agbo announces that a prize will be awarded to the student with the best essay, the homework becomes a competition, which Ezekiel and his classmates are determined to win at all costs.


    As the deadline approaches, Ezekiel's life is visited by an array of dramatic episodes. Caught in the middle of all the drama is his teacher, Miss Agbo, who despite being a keen romantic has been unlucky in love. Will Ezekiel win? Will Miss Agbo finally find love?


    This heartwarming tale of primary school life in 1990s Nigeria is witty, nostalgic and unforgettable.


    This book is perfect for beginning readers, children who love reading funny chapter books and adults who enjoy reading African children's literature.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPublishdrive
    Release dateApr 14, 2017
    ISBN9781531246983
    The Day I Will Never Forget
    Author

    Sharon Abimbola Salu

    Sharon Abimbola Salu is the author of A Goat Called Curry. Born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, she now lives in the United States of America. Visit her online at SharonSalu.com.

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      Book preview

      The Day I Will Never Forget - Sharon Abimbola Salu

      THE DAY I WILL NEVER FORGET

      Sharon Abimbola Salu

      PRONOUN

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Chapter 1: Our Class Teacher, the Rabbit Lover

      Chapter 2: The Boy with the Fat Cheeks

      Chapter 3: Revenge on a Plate of Party Jollof Rice

      Chapter 4: Ezekiel’s Mother Suspects Something

      Chapter 5: Miss Agbo tells her story

      Episode 6: Those Troublesome Twins

      Chapter 7: Father Christmas, Miss Agbo and the English Composition

      Chapter 8: Show Me Your Report Card

      Chapter 9: All is well that ends well

      About the Author

      Other Stories by Sharon Abimbola Salu

      Copyright

      Chapter 1

      Our Class Teacher, the Rabbit Lover

      We all knew about the rabbits. It was not a secret. Every student in my Primary 3 class - 5, 6, 7 year olds just like me - was aware that Miss Agbo, our class teacher, absolutely loved rabbits.

      The first clue was the picture alphabet chart celotaped to one of the orange walls of our classroom. It was the first thing that caught your eye when you walked into class, an eruption of colors contrasting with the blackboard, which took up a sizeable portion of the wall in front of the class. The presence of the alphabet chart was ironic; we were all well past the age of learning our A-B-Cs, and in fact, anyone who didn’t know at age 6 that A was for Apple was considered a D: Dunce. Or O: Olodo, the more pathetic, local and certainly more humiliating term for a dunce. Borrowed from Yoruba, of course.

      But what was a picture alphabet chart doing in a Primary 3 classroom?

      Good question.

      Now, that chart had once graced the walls of a nursery classroom. However, after some renovations and shuffling of classrooms to accommodate the rapidly growing student population, or ‘population explosion’ as our headmaster often squealed during assembly in the morning, the Nursery 2 classroom, got converted to the Primary 3 classroom headed by Miss Agbo.

      And that chart stayed behind.

      For us, it was a constant reminder that we were not the first ones to colonize that room. Or perhaps, it was a visual reminder that as young as we were, we had simply graduated from small children to older children.

      The day I stepped into the classroom at the beginning of the first term, I noticed the chart for two reasons. First, the blackboard had been newly blackened with charcoal and water, a ritual that was performed over the long holidays, and signified a new beginning, just as much as the absence of chalk dust or broken pieces of colored chalk evidenced the lack of use of the classroom for several months.

      Second, my desk was right in front of the said chart. Not my doing, of course. It was my mother’s handiwork. She pulled some strings to ensure I sat in the front row. But she had very strong reasons: my poor eyesight. I started wearing glasses the year before, and my mother who had a morbid fear of me wearing bifocals before leaving the university, ensured that I did not strain my eyes by sitting at the back.

      However, because the chart was right in front of my eyes, I noticed that something was amiss with the letter R.

      You see, someone had cut out a rather unwholesome picture of a rabbit, a square picture, mind you, of the furry, white, pink-in-some-parts, animal from a magazine or calendar (the glossy paper was a dead giveaway). Now, this person had glued this square picture on top of what I usually saw below the letter R on alphabet charts: R for Rat.

      I should have been grateful that I was spared the horror of having my eyes assaulted by a large, ugly rat for the entire school term. But I was not grateful.

      Why?

      You would have to see Miss Agbo’s rabbit to appreciate my ingratitude.

      The creature that had been glued to the picture alphabet chart was large, pink and white alright. But that was where it stopped bearing any resemblance to a rabbit. It looked like a mutated rodent that had been fed on a steady diet of palmoil, garden egg and zobo (all genetically modified and pumped full of hormones, of course) for most of its baby rabbit life. And now, this monstrosity had the effrontery to call itself a rabbit!

      What an insult!

      Like a typical 6-year old boy, I blamed the only adult in the vicinity for this horrible assault on my fragile senses: Miss Agbo.

      But, this was just the first clue that this woman loved rabbits.

      As for the other clues, she wore them on her person.

      Literally.

      Rabbit-shaped earrings in all the colors of the rainbow, dresses with rabbit prints, rabbit-shaped erasers for her exclusive use and such other clues as a 6-year old would care about.

      After having recurring nightmares of that monster on the chart for the first few weeks of school, I vowed in my little heart that I would make Miss Agbo pay for the torture she had inflicted on me.

      What I didn’t know was that the opportunity for my revenge would come sooner than I expected.

      Chapter 2

      The Boy with the Fat Cheeks

      Miss Agbo was what as an adult, I can now refer to as meticulous. But as a child, I thought she was just petty. Too particular, and in fact, obsessed with an infinite number of small, uninteresting details.

      At the end of class every day, she would ensure that the class captain cleaned the blackboard with the duster, and swept all the chalk dust that had accumulated over the course of the day’s lessons, into the dustbin. In her words,

      What are we keeping chalk dust for? Do you want to eat it? Or are we going to sell in the market?

      The class captain’s typical reply was:

      No, ma.

      But more than once, I caught him in what appeared to be a mental struggle between replying with the customary No, ma, or diving into a detailed account of just why he thought chalk dust should be allowed to accumulate untouched all the way to Christmas. Or Ileya the following year.

      He never did.

      The class captain, Bright, who thankfully lived up to his name, was a very disciplined and responsible boy, who would not have been caught dead disobeying any kind of authority. He also happened to be my seat-mate, and managed to be the voice of reason when I shared my less-than-pleasant plans for Miss Agbo with him. In fact, the day we voted him class captain, the votes in his favor were almost entirely unanimous, with the only dissenters being the twins: Funso and Funto. Nobody liked them. Except for Miss Agbo, who mostly turned a blind eye to their many transgressions because in her words, I want to have twins too!

      So they got away with many, many things.

      Being in her early 30s and still unmarried, Miss Agbo had marriage and children on her mind. No surprises there. In fact, it was a wonder she was not married.

      Tall, slender and very pretty, albeit a little clumsy, Miss Agbo was well-mannered and polite. We did not know why she was not married, but she certainly loved children. If all these qualities alone, and by themselves, determined who qualified for marriage, Miss Agbo should have been married a long time ago, and probably expecting baby number 4.

      But as we all know, life is not mathematics. These things are not logical.

      Among the classes Miss Agbo taught, English was by far her favorite. There again, we didn’t see eye to eye.

      She was the sort of person who loved open-ended questions, the kind that required you to express yourself and expand on ideas with only ink, paper and time to limit you. I, however, preferred multiple choice questions, or the occasional fill in the blank format.

      About two weeks before our mid-term break, Miss Agbo announced that she would be giving us a special assignment which we had to turn in before we went home for the break. But, she refused to tell us what this assignment was. In my mind, she did this because she relished the thought of watching us squirm and fret over something we could not possibly escape.

      Finally, one week later, on a Wednesday afternoon, she told us:

      "Children, on Friday, I

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