Comedy Open Mic Round 9: Property of a Nigerian Mother

If you grew up in a Nigerian household, you will realize that there are some absolute facts; “your mother owns you, she is always right and you have no opinions”, if you understand these facts, it might bring you peace and you will live longer than the average tortoise.

Well, for me, As the last child of six children, I was pretty obedient, until my teenage years, when I wanted to explore life as if that was an option for a Nigerian female child.

During this period of my “rebellion” as my mother will call it, I decided to do one of the forbidden things in my home which was having friends; I don’t even know why I would ever think of communicating with anyone else except my siblings, can you imagine the horror?

Having friends meant one thing, I needed to at least hang out with them because how can you have friends and you don’t even go out with them, but there was one problem; I wasn’t allowed to leave my house except for church and school.

Since I attended church with my mother, the only option for going out was after school, but there was another issue; my mother knew when my school closed so I had to diverse a plan, and like they say “strict parents create sneaky children”.

The whole plan was to tell my mother that I had after school lessons because I was a straight-A student which was true, and I needed to continue being that with these lessons.

Surprisingly enough, this worked out with no questions asked because education is power, and even though in my country, most graduates don’t have jobs, it is still power.

My plan worked out for a long while and I was enjoying life, until one day when I and my friends decided to go to a mall to see a movie, to do that we needed to get a tricycle and usually I wouldn’t get into vehicles because of the fear of that I might meet someone I might know but, my friends convinced me.

We had already watched the movie and were going back home when we boarded a tricycle with someone I knew, can you guess who?; well, ding ding ding, it was my mother.

I immediately started shaking and praying to God that if I didn’t die, I will never do it again, my mother on the other hand acted as if she didn’t see me and even allowed me pay for my transport fare which was scary.

We got to our street and she started walking home while I creepily walked behind her, and even though I wouldn’t want to go into any details, I can tell you that I got a beating that reset my life.

I promised after the beating that I would remain her property forever, and also that I would never disobey her ever again which brought me peace.

Did I still do worse? Yes, did I get more beating? Yes of course, but, I am here today, so I clearly survived, hallelujah.