I wasn't always the kid who did extra growing up. I was quite the calm and level-headed kid (I mean, weren't we all? Hehe). I spent all my teenage years living with my aunt, who was quite a strict woman. Especially when it comes to having friends over or visiting them. I had friends from school who would always want to hang out, but sometimes they remember "oh, your aunt will give us the attitude when she sees us" and they stay back.
Me, on the other hand, would occasionally want to visit them at their houses, but it's either I'm reminded of the many chores I have to do or she simply creates a new one to keep me busy, since I seemed to have so much time.
On this particular day, I was home alone and bored. She had already left for a hospital checkup, and I knew it would probably take the whole day. So what do they always say? "When the cat's away... the mice will play!" I decided I was going to have all the fun until she came back. Starting with visiting my friend who was just 10 minutes away from our house then.
I knew I needed to keep things simple—just do all my chores before going on my adventure, monitor the time so I can come back and pretend like I didn't just make some crazy moves.
Everything was going well. I did all the chores and visited my friend. We had some fun, and when I sensed my aunt might be done with hospital, I made my way back home. I met the gate exactly the way I locked it, meaning nobody was home yet. Phew.
That was where the trouble started.
So we had 2 bunches of keys that had similar keychains. One for the main gate and the doors. The other bunch was for our farm next to it. It was two different lands separated by a very high fence with all those spikes and dangerous things Nigerian buildings have to keep intruders from breaking in.
Unknown to me, I took the bunch that was meant for the farm instead of the main gate. There was no single key that could open the main gate from that bunch. My anxiety level was rising because the more I kept trying each key on the padlock expecting a miracle to happen, the more my panic rose because it was getting darker and I didn't know the best way to explain my look and where I was coming from.
I mean, it would be easier to lie my way out of that situation if I said I went to get something from the store close to home and mixed up the keys, but my dress would definitely expose me.
I couldn't think of anything else than to climb the fence from the farm to the house. So I unlocked the padlock to the farm. Fortunately, there were some building blocks that had not been used. I layered them up to a height that I could easily climb on the fence. In that moment, I was just praying not to meet a random stranger that would raise alarm thinking I was trying to break into someone's house like a thief.
I successfully climbed on the fence, sustaining a few cuts from the broken glass and the spikes, which at that moment wasn't even a problem. Coming down was the problem. There was nothing near the fence on the other side for me to land on. No blocks around to at least reduce the height I was supposed to jump down from. I had no choice than to jump down from there.
I quickly ran in and changed my clothes so that even if I'm going to cook up a lie, it will at least be believable. After changing and making sure everything was in order, I opened the biggest gate (the part where cars are supposed to come in from) from inside. Took the correct bunch of keys and opened that padlock, and everything looked normal again.
I went over to the farm and removed my climbing blocks. My aunt came back and I successfully avoided trouble. I think over it now and I ask myself how I managed to do that level crazy kind of thing. I would never be able to pull that kind of stunt now.