First Gentleman with Wilson Orhiunu
Email: babawill2000
The family car was an integral part of my childhood. I was a perpetual back seat passenger who never once used a seat belt or car seat as we sped like the star ship enterprise through the streets of Lagos. Those were the days when the roads were smooth, the cars few and the motor bikes had not undergone their identity crisis and transformed into taxis. My dad had a good choice of music in his air-conditioned Peugeot 504 so we ‘back benchers’ did not mind the occasional ‘over-crowding and lapping’. Those journeys proved to be educational sessions with a little bit of spanking thrown in. Naija parents had evolved to be able to drive with both eyes glued to the road while they swivel like lightening to connect your thighs with a resounding slap. Spare the rod and spoil the child no ni. Cry and you risk hearing the immortal words, ‘don’t let me park this car and…’
I learnt not to laugh at beggars with strange deformities the hard way. To date, no joke about physical deformities makes me laugh. Rather, my thigh gets phantom pains when I hear Naija comedians go one about ‘imbeciles’. These people did not ride in our 504 growing up! Other things that could evoke a slap-driving incident include arguing over whose elbow is digging into who on the back bench.
The worse place to seat in a 504 was the middle position in the back bench. For, you had to place your right leg in Onitsha and the left leg in Asaba as you straddle the Onitsha Bridge ( that mould of metal that rose out of the car floor). Your thighs were vulnerable to attack in this position from the powers that be in the front bench.
At our primary school we all knew what car each pupil’s family drove. The stars of the class were the ones who had chauffeur driven D-Super Citroen. Those were the cars we gathered to view after school. We marvelled as the hydraulics took the back of the car higher than a baboon’s bum before it moved forward. In my family you did not ask to be picked up from school. ‘Wetin do yua leg?’
I recall our English textbook – The New Oxford English Course Book 5 which featured Mr Bako and family touring all the sights of Nigeria in the family car for weeks on end without an armed robber, a kidnapper or carbon foot prints being woven into the story line. Those good days of innocence had us all believing that we all would drive nice cars with our families when we grew up like Mr Bako. We even had a British couple visit our school in their ‘kombi’ bus in which they had driven across the Sahara. Imagine how a nine year old would feel seeing someone drive from London to Sunny Field Primary School, Adelabu. I thought the smiling white couple had a secret mental illness. However, all these events helped to cement the notion in our young minds that driving cars is what you did when you grew a beard (economy come fall people hand).
The interstate highways were always exciting. The back benchers cheered when our family car displayed superior horse power and overtook other cars. When the sun roof was opened, viewing birds and planes through it provided a magical delight. You slept, drooled on your neighbour woke up and wondered why Nigeria was so big. Not there yet?! Reading comics to past the time meant you had to wait for your slower sibling reading over your shoulder before you could to turn the page. If a quarrel ensues between comic owner and parasite there was only one solution in the car. ‘Pass me that comic!’, confiscation, with or without a thigh slap.
Suddenly, I find myself in the driver’s seat with my own set of seat belt-wearing back benchers. While my dad travelled Nigeria without maps and merely parked the car to ask passers-by the direction, I use Sat Nav. A few years ago, I used maps and street maps. Those were the days couples fought over whose fault is was when the family got lost. A wise man once told me that you could tell the married couples in a traffic jam. They are the ones not talking and looking in the opposite directions because they are either coming out of or building up to a row. The couples laughing are either having an affair or are engaged and yet to find out bad habits and nasty secrets. This was the same wise man who told the street he never took nonsense from any woman till his cover was blown when neighbours had to run in to save him from the George Foreman style punches his wife was grilling him with at two in the morning. They got there just in time as she was about to upgrade from fists to wooden pestle.
Today, I find that the car journey is about the only time all members of the family are in one place and moving in the same direction with little chance for an escape. At home, you can retreat to the bedroom or bathroom but in the car there is no way out.
For harmony, fart management is important especially when driving in winter with the windows closed. The pre-fart ventilation is a manoeuvre that must be mastered. ‘Darling, why are you opening the windows? Must be replied with, ‘I need a touch of cold air, don’t want to fall asleep’. While talking, the released fart is soon ‘Gone with the wind’. The kids sleeping at the back would never have guessed that the driver had farted.
Though I am on the driver’s seat now, I do sometimes wonder if roles might change again one day. For when today’s Dad becomes tomorrow’s Great Grandpa, he may get relegated to the back seat from whence he came.
