'All that glitters are not gold' is one of the underrated proverbs because it holds a strong meaning and gives a good lesson. I actually first heard this proverb when I was little but I didn't know what it meant, I could remember repeating the words to my mate joking like I understood what it meant. There are other Proverb too that my people will always say that I joked with when I was a kid without knowing the meaning, it goes like this "Aso nla ko ni eyan nla" which means "Just because a person wears expensive clothes doesn't mean he is rich". But as kids, we just repeat whatever we hear from the mouths of our elders without asking just like the Nigeria vs. Indian football match. Well, back to what I was saying, until a certain event happens before I truly understand what it means, grab your popcorn so you enjoy this write-up.
There was a boy in my school who was always winning the best student in his class, he didn't score anything less than 90/100 and for this, the whole teacher would use him as an example for us because we were in junior class and even for some of the senior class. There was a time they wanted to use him as the senior prefect of the school and the only thing that stopped them was because he was in junior secondary school and the school had senior secondary school. But he was used as the assistant senior prefect and I could remember there was times he enjoyed more benefit than the senior prefect of this school.
I was in junior secondary school but 2 classes behind him but have known him since I was in primary school because he didn't change school and I didn't either, have seen him in debates or quizzes the ones they do on Friday after school and he doesn't really participate well but no one would say he his not brilliant because of that, they would just say he is shy to face crowd which that excuse worked perfectly fine but just before we resumed the second term which starts in January they decide to change their class teacher, they brought in another one and promoted the past to been the assistant principal of the school.
After they did that his grade began to drop and the school even questioned the teacher's ability and thought he had not adapted to the teacher's way of teaching and after the exam the brilliant boy that we all know couldn't make the top 20 in his class. The boy's parents were nice to this new teacher too, but he thought they were just being nice and when they saw the teacher wasn't doing what they wanted they had to approach him to bribe him so their child could pass the next exam.
The teacher was smart enough to decline their offer and they told the school to have a change of teacher just because their child was not doing well, the assistant principal backed them up but the school board said no, The teacher was kind enough not to report the incident but after he knew they were after his job, he brought the evidence to the board and that was how the whole school got to know the truth, the teacher that was promoted lost his new post with a very comfortable salary and the boy got expelled. As a matter of fact, he had to travel away from our town because of the disgrace.
It was after this incident while our principal was addressing the whole school that I realised the meaning of that proverb after she used it at the end speech and also gave the meaning.
I hope you had fun reading this? Have a lovely weekend. Football is back and weekends just got better. Love you all