One of the things we students all agree on is that all of our fathers were brilliant in school. All of our parents were good at sports. All of our mothers won the cooking and baking competitions, in fact they took over the food and nutrition classes from their teachers.

Bragging rights was ours because our parents tell us of their greatness in their hay days….and should you want to dock a slap but miss, omg! You have just landed yourself another round of self praising by your father. “Look at you, you think you can dodge? You think you are fast? Go and ask em.. What’s his name again.. whothe real boys were”. The story continues. No room for verification. Who is there to ask from anyway? We believe it all. Not that we had an option… thanks to your wandering thoughts, you find that you’ve probably missed another version of the one and same story and thinking to yourself, why did I attempt to dock the slap.. Okay, next time I know what to do. Collect the slap like a young man, see the stars, lie that I walked into a wall and bear the pain for two days max.  Anything but this story again…

"We resume the inter-house sports practices on Wednesday. We retain our houses from last year; new students will be assigned theirs during the course of the day. We expect both competition and co-operation from every single person."

“Aha.. Before I forget” the announcer continues “inform your parents we would have parent’s event for 100m race and may be football game” 

What news could be better than this? Not even Cyril Stober could have announced it better. Smiles on our faces as we walk into our classes. We reminisce in hushed tones how we fared in the last sports event. Excuses, bragging and even betting are already under way.   Now in class, I don’t exactly recall how we got to this point but I seem to agree with the statement: if all our Dads were unbeaten in sports, it’s obvious they were not in the same school.

Guys giggling. Our minds and eyes doing the talking now. We are all in sync!

We must pull this off. Boys converging at a corner.

“We need more than an invite”

“We need a letter…. A convincing letter”

“We need a signature.”

Today, we earn our bragging rights, not because a story is told us, but because we actually earn it. We earn it not by paying for it, but by making it happen.

“All invited parents please get ready for the 100m dash”

Wow! The sight of men taking off the excess clothing just to motivate their wards to greatness is so inspiring. Now, I wish we did not do this out of selfishness. 

“On your marks, Get set…”

Barely taken off from the starting line and someone is already on the floor, whose Dad is that?

OMG! The race is between my Dad and Lawal’s Dad.

What happened next is not worth writing. No way.

In a nutshell, the day ended with a father in the hospital. Two fathers claiming they came first…

“You got there before me but my head was far ahead of yours”. Phew

Principal finds out her signature was forged. No one knows who neither wrote the letter nor came up with the idea.

My role in all of this? NOT GUILTY.