Thinking back to the years I got into a lot of trouble not for the regular reasons children my age get into trouble for makes me smile so much.
I was raised largely by my grandparents where we were prohibited from speaking any other language aside from English, it was an interesting journey that if you were caught speaking any other language would land you a proper ass whooping from my grand dad.
My grand dad's statements that are forever hitched in my mind are two. The first one being "don't speak vanacular" which we the kids often joked about saying the vanacular sounded like banana that's inside cooler ( don't blame us we were kids) and the second one being "my friend, don't be silly" when you hear this one you know you're in big trouble.
We became so careful that we didn't let slip ups happen. This really helped perfect my command of the English language sadly I became too good for my own good, at least that's how it looked then.
It's no news that when you've gained a little command over something you're prone to correct others when they make blunders.
This was the case for me as I found my self correcting the tenses of people who were older than me, my age mates and even those younger, I openly told them they were wrong and pushed in their faces the right ways to articulate words.
I would get scolded over and over again,
"you're not supposed to correct your elders"
" don't you know how people will feel?"
"ehen, so it's you that can speak English pass abi?"
" Weldone, English professor"
These were the sonorous tunes that were sung into my ears over and over again. You would think I immediately caved in but oh well I continued till when I wrote my External WAEC.
There was this girl I liked, she was pretty and she had all those curves and edges that John Legend sang about. Before long I tried to get close to her and I hit a wall of brick when she spoke to me the first time.
Hmmmm. Her diction and her intonations were out of the room, I caught myself correcting her so many times. Unknown to me this pisses her off and she always felt like she was less than a human close to me. Long and short of the story, she confronted me... She cried... I was like "hollup" you mean this my innocent corrections really weigh people down like this?
Till date, I barely openly correct people (well, i still correct my girlfriend 🤭).
It's funny how the voice of that correction still rings in my head when I hear someone make a blunder, it's not as loud as it used to be but it's still there.
This is my response to @Hivenaija week 66 prompt;
📝 Share with us that one habit that got you into trouble several times as a kid but you couldn't just get rid of it easily. Tell us one of the experiences this habit landed you in, and let's know how you got rid of that habit.
Image generated using Leonardo Ai