My reading and writing have always been tied together. Reading one of those children’s stories featuring the cunning tortoise (or hare) would prompt me to write a very similar — if skewed — version with the same animal characters, and a few words changed here and there.

I like to tell people I started reading when I was five and writing when I was eight. Technically, I did start writing in my own words at eight, but before then I was an accomplished master of plagiarism.

“Let’s publish this book when I’m done copying it,” I remember saying to my mother when I was about 5.

I was in the middle of transferring Kola Onadipe’s Magic Land of Shadows to one of my schoolbooks. I copied everything, word for word, letter for letter except for the very creative part where I swapped the author’s name with mine. I believed I could walk into a publisher’s office with my draft, get published and enjoy royalties for the rest of my life. Life really should be that simple.

To cut a long story short, my mother had a long talk with me about copyright and after that I became one of the few 5-year-olds whose vocabulary included the word ‘plagiarism.’

For a while I stuck to what I’ll call pseudo-plagiarism — taking an idea from many books in the same genre and applying some what-ifs to change the story — but even when I wrote something original, it always paid some tribute to the writings of others, themes I didn’t really believe in, ideas I didn’t really understand or could not identify with. I believe that’s a big betrayal of oneself as a writer, or someone with writer pretentions.

Death and insanity — as well as all the various states other than complete sanity (if it exists).

Morbid fascinations, I agree, but I always return to these two themes because I like them. They’re unknowns, open to different interpretations and connect us all as humans, surfacing with our emotions.

I used to be able to pick a topic and write within its confines. Recently, however, I find things going off at extremely wild tangents. As an example, I have a blog post in my drafts called ‘Formal Language.’ I won’t spoil the contents because I intend to put it up sometime in the future, but at some point things took an odd turn and suddenly, I was  writing about breasts. No, you cannot ask me why, but you’d be hard-pressed to find anything connecting formal language and mammary glands, and that brings me to my decision.

I won’t fight the drifting off any more and I took the liberty of starting with this piece. Perhaps there are lessons to be learned in expressing myself when I fly off at a tangent. Superstitions and rambling are fair play.

——

While I get some writing done, here’s what I’ve been listening to.

“No. Cricket’s about the only batting game,” I replied. “Now that’s one game I’ve never understood. Wickets, fielding, batting — I don’t know anything about that stuff. I know the words but not what they are.  Apparently it’s more popular in Commonwealth countries, although I don’t know about Canada.”

“Me neither,” he said.

We’d been discussing sports, which if you know me, is a topic I only handle well when I’m bashing everything other than table tennis.

“How about football?” he asked.

“No.”

“Rugby? That’s close.”

“Not that I know of. Soccer’s everything.It’s only here it isn’t called football.”

A nasty thought popped in my head just then, and I found myself smiling.

“When I was little there was a game we used to play called American Football,” I said. “It was like soccer, although if the ball passed between your legs, everyone would gather around and beat you up.”

“American football, huh?” he cracked up and I joined him. “That sounds right for some reason.”

“It was a really silly game,” I continued. “I remember we didn’t care much about scoring any goals. We’d run around trying to kick the ball through someone’s legs while trying not to fall victim. It was a really nice game.”

And it was. Even the bullies would let us punch them, and we didn’t hit too hard.

You’d think the bow-legged guys were at a disadvantage, but you couldn’t be more wrong. There was this space between their legs but I don’t recall many instances of any of them getting kolo-ed.

I sometimes wonder if kids still play that game.

“What?” I asked, puzzled.

They looked at each other.

“You’re eating grass!” one of them exclaimed, pointing at the stalk I’d been chewing on.

All I could offer was a nonplussed “Oh.”

I’ve loved to chew on things for as long as I can remember. Insects, the tender bases of grass stalks, mango leaves, chalk, bones, pens and pencils, paper, plastic wrap, wine corks, paper, can pull tabs, bottle tops and the inside of my mouth have been on my”menu” at some point in my life.

Of these only the inside of my mouth, insects and bones are actually edible.Everything else draws that curious look from people that I’ve learned to ignore. You haven’t been living the life if you’ve never chewed on a pen at least once.

Recently, I’ve had a preference for plastic bottle tops. I was doing grocery shopping the other day when I caught myself trying to make a decision on what kind of water to buy based on the chewability of their tops.

I prefer Great Value to the slightly pricier Sam’s Choice because of the softer caps. For the same reason, I like the smaller Sam’s Choice bottles because they’re chewier than their bigger cousins — there’s also the added bonus of having two bottle caps to chew on when I drink the same amount of water. Zephyrhills and Deer Park are also fun. Aquafina isn’t.

Yes, I know I’m weird.

Blemishes — physical or behavioral — reassure me. Perfection, however, is creepy.

It’s something we should strive for, but not something anyone should achieve.

I don’t remember anything Nigerian being this efficient…

Whatever happened to being yourself?

It so happened that on one of those days, we confirmed the presence of a humongous piece of beef at least 5-6 times larger than anything else in the entire soup pot. This wasn’t one of those times when the person serving himself surreptitiously examined two similar pieces to determine which was bigger — or as we all did on occasion, test the weight using the scooping spoon.

Into Chief’s bowl it went. I got the next largest, and my little brother Uche got the next. What was left was a very little piece, so tiny it would have fit on a teaspoon. Perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but it was a lot smaller than anything else in the pot.

Halfway into his meal Chief attempted to sample his meat and discovered it was hard to the touch. Yes, there were striations just like the beef his younger brothers had, but it wasn’t beef — or any kind of meat for that matter.

It was a stick.

I still don’t know what it’s called, but it’s usually ground up into a spice and used for cooking. Our mother cooked with it whole, preferring to let the soup absorb only some of its essence.

When we saw his reaction, we knew what it was. Our Uncle M– had fallen victim to it the month before. Very quickly, Uche threw his meat into his mouth and began to chew. The law of the jungle applied at the table when our parents weren’t around to ensure some semblance of civilization and the weakest are always the first to take steps to protect themselves or in this case, their property.

I was three years younger than Chief but we were the same size. The Isoko woman who lived around the corner even called us Ejima everytime we went out wearing the matching clothes our mother seemed to think we should wear.

My elder brother sized me up and I glared back. We had fought several times and were pretty much on par with each other. I was prepared to fight again. Everybody knew meat tasted best if you kept it for last after finishing up your eba, and I was not going to eat mine simply because I didn’t want to fight with my brother over it.

He left the table slowly, returning to the kitchen. I waited nervously, hoping he had not gone to fetch the eba stick, his preferred weapon. Whoever held the eba stick always had the advantage, and I had hidden it several times to make the fights fairer, sometimes even wielding it myself.

He returned with the last piece of meat and all the tension drained away.

“Azuka,” he said when he sat down. “Let’s exchange our meats.”

“You chose first,” I grinned at him.

He grinned back, then we were all laughing.

He never fell for the soup stick again, but I did, and that’s a story for another day.

Dark-brown eyes met his, mysterious, but surprisingly tender.

“Who’re you?” he asked the woman sharing his bed. He could not remember bringing anyone home the night before.

“Willie-Willie,” came the reply.

He had heard that name before, but as he racked his brain for just where, the answer continually eluded him, lurking just out of reach as if teasing him.

“Did you come home with me last night?” he asked.

“No,” she replied, a half-smile forming on her lips. She seemed to be amused at whatever expression he was making at the moment.

“Then how did you get into my bed?!” he almost screamed, holding back just in time. Instead, he said calmly, “Ok.”

“Then how did you get into my bed?!” she shouted.

He jumped.

“You wanted to say that, didn’t you?” she was grinning now, the soft light coming through his window from the street reflecting on her teeth.

There was something teasing in her tone — inviting, but forbidding at the same time.

“How the…” he blurted out.

“…hell did you…” she completed what he was going to say, stopping where he would have ended the open question. “Because I can read your mind, Bright.”

“Bitch,” he thought.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said, moving closer.

“Idiot. Bitch. Idiot. Bitch”, he thought, wearing his best smile.

She had a puzzled expression, and for once, he had the upper hand. There was just no way she could read his mind. The big question was who she was.

“I’m leaving,” she said finally.

She didn’t fade away or put her hands on her head. One moment she was there, the next she wasn’t. It was that simple.

Just as suddenly as she vanished he remembered where he had heard the name “Willie-Willie”, but he didn’t care.

Bright didn’t believe in ghosts.

********************************************

“What’s your name today — Nchele?” he asked when he woke up the next night and found her there.

“Will you call me Mammy-Water next?” she retorted.

He reached out to touch her, not completely surprised his hand did not go through her cheek.

“I suppose you do have substance,” he concluded aloud.

“Of course I do,” she looked a little miffed.

He matched her gaze, and they looked at each other in silence until the only sound he was aware of was his breathing.

“You’re a strange one, aren’t you?” she asked.

“I get that a lot,” he replied, completely deadpan.

We only had a footpath where Oro-Ekpo Road is today. The rest of the road was overrun by weeds, rubbish dumping was rampant, and it wasn’t uncommon to sight a snake  — or soldier ants.

They moved in what looked like an organized line. If you looked closely, you’d find the line was thicker at the center with what I’ll call ‘explorers’ leaving to investigate the surroundings and re-entering when they were done.

If you stepped on something crunchy, chances were high that you’d encountered some. Even worse was when you didn’t know they were there as happened to me once.

We didn’t have a borehole then as we still had a lot of modifications to make to the house, so my brother and I would make the journey to one of the commercial pumps everyone who had one (a borehole) seemed to have. The pumps were in fact, so popular we used to have lines in front of them.

Sometimes we would show up with 8 containers and fill them all up in one go. One person stayed behind to watch over them while the other pushed the rest home in a barrow, four at a time, bringing back the empty cans to rejoin the line.

It was one of those slow days and after making several trips home, it was my turn to wait in line while my brother ‘Chief’ made the journey home. A family with what looked like 50 jerry cans was in the middle of filling them.

I was next in line but as the family didn’t seem like they would be done  soon, I found a log to sit on. I must have been sitting for close to 20 minutes before the last jerry can was filled up.

Halfway up from the log, I got the first bite. I jumped up with a howl.

In the instant I looked back at the log I knew I was in trouble. A very thick line of soldier ants had formed while I was seated and crawled everywhere behind me while I remained motionless, completely unaware of the danger.

Just as my first movement triggered the first bite, my jumping up set off more than ten bites in response. I must have looked funny slapping all over myself, getting bitten again and again with each slap because some people who stood off to the side were doubled over with laughter.

“Take off your clothes!” shouted one girl.

I gave her a look that said, “I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t take yours off even if you had scorpions crawling around inside” — or at least I tried to. Another bite interrupted me mid-pose and I screamed.

I took off for home in a sprint, my position in line completely forgotten. As I ran, I hit wherever I got bitten.

The ants seemed to be playing a game with me. Just when I thought I’d gotten the last bite, another ant would give me one more intense than the last.

By the time I got home, I’d pretty much eliminated them all.

Needless to say, I was a lot more careful for some time after that but it wasn’t the last time I had a painful encounter with soldier ants.