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School is fun, no doubt about that even on bad days, there is always something to cheer up the day for you, my secondary moment was one of my best schooling moments, turning into a young adult, especially in senior classes, we felt like we were next to superior, that is after the teachers, all power was given unto us, being a junior felt like you were an ant because you could be crushed any moment by the seniors, I remember how many times I prayed to become a senior and when I eventually did, I couldn't even find myself behaving as most seniors did to me during my time as a junior, they sent us on errand any time they wish, some were outrightly wicked or should I use the word, they could call you into their class to make fun of either your shoes, school uniform skirt for being oversized or hairstyle, etc all these they seemingly find funny to make jest of you.
During a lunch break as a senior, one new junior student became a victim, she has just been transferred from a village school, and for some odd reason, everyone found her accent funny, she was asked to stand in front of the class while they asked her series of irrelevant questions just to hear her speak her unique and thick Yoruba-English while they all burst into laughter, she was their free source of entertainment. I tried to make them stop, but it was futile as my classmates, all ganged up on me, apparently they were having fun, thankfully the bell rang soon to end the comedy show while the poor girl hurriedly escape to her class.
Unknowingly to us, the physics teacher had watched the whole event displayed through the classroom window, as soon as he entered, he told everyone to cut out a piece of paper from the middle of our notebooks, we were having an impromptu test, ha!, the whole class went into confusion, but we couldn't disobey, luckily or unluckily for me, I had already reviewed my books and the questions set were what I recently read, so I was quick to write and submit my answers. After the test, our physics teacher told us to exchange our answer sheets, solved the questions on the board, and told us to score each other, collecting back our answer sheets, I scored 4 out of 5 questions, while the rest scored zero, I guess I was lucky because of my habit of always reviewing each subject before the teacher came in.
The turn of events came when Mr Laide, our physics teacher handed over his cane to me to flog all my classmates ha! I cannot do it, I told him, he looked sternly and threatened to show me how, I reluctantly hit the first student on his palm, more like caressing his palm, Mr. Laide got upset, collected the cane, and asked me to stretch out my palms and hit them very hard as an example, I felt the painful sting surge through my body from my palm, with tears finding their way through and flowing freely from eyes as if I was on vengeance, I hit everybody with a maybe same intensity one by one, I learned the hard way from Mr. Laide. At the end of it all, he told us how he had watched us making fun of the junior student and me trying to stop them without succeeding, reason, why he gave us the test, was because we were supposed to use our free time to study, instead we did otherwise and since I was the unlucky one to pass, I had to the dirty job, so next time, I wouldn't keep quiet, rather report those guilty of such actions.
From then henceforth, I try not to get involved with messy situations and make sure to stand up against any bully till the victim gets freed.
