A Resolution in the Mid 2000s
Since we're talking about resolutions this week, I remember my first resolution. Now, I wondered what a 9 year old knows about resolutions that I had two pages of new year resolutions, at least that's how I remember it. I also remember because it was the first and last time I kept a diary.
It was the mid 2000s. I was just 9 and attended Sunday School. Auntie Ego was my Sunday School teacher and on the last Sunday of the year, she taught us new year resolutions. I remembered that she read a story titled "Heaps of Dirty Clothes," I can't remember the story, but i remember that it ended with a resolution. Auntie Ego made us promise to 'turn a new leaf' in the coming year by making new year resolutions. That way, she said, God will give us what we deserve. Who doesn't want some reward for being a good kid? "I will make a resolution."
My new year resolution now is to look fresh.
Auntie Ego did not ask us to write down our resolutions, but I guess I wanted to really impress God, so I wrote mine down in one of my old exercise books. It was a red-covered 'Olympic' exercise book (GenZ step aside) that I had used in a previous class at school. I tore out all the pages I had written notes on which left the book looking really lean, then I got to work. What were the bad things I needed to stop doing? I wrote them down.
When i was writing my resolutions, I am sure now, that I did not have any feeling it was going to get me in trouble. Second term started in January and things were going well until someone stole a classmate's money. The class teacher then started searching our bags. When he got to me, he did not want to search my school bag, but I guess he had a second thought because of fairness. He asked me to empty my books on the floor so he can pick them and flip through the pages.
No sooner had he started searching my bag than he encountered my diary. Of course, I was a little boy but I was certain it was the devil setting a trap for me. Uncle Sambo, our class teacher was wondering why the book felt scanty. He asked me and I told him it was my rough book. He wanted to return it, then he changed his mind, and in my mind I was saying "please give me my book, sir. Don't listen to satan."
Guess what? He listened to satan, he read all the resolutions I wrote and shook his head all through. Of all the things I wrote in my diary, the one I was punished for, was the one I asked God to help me to stop writing love letters to Auntie Emily Kande, signing it off with Uncle Sambo's name.
They knew it was a pupil writing those letters and dropping them on Auntie Emily's table, they were not bothered about it, or so I thought. I did not know that they have secretly been investigating. That day, I was beaten like a thief!
All images, except the one cited in-text, are mine.