Many things happened around me as a child that called for my curiosity. My greatest desire was to try out whatever knowledge I acquired about anything. Once I started asking questions, I was doing that not just for the fun of it but in preparation to try something out later. I would like to talk about two of them.
My Aunt is a tailor and she was staying with us. I was about six years old then. One day she was working with her sewing machine and I saw her applying lubricant to a component of the machine. I was curious about the reason behind the addition of the lubricating oil. I asked her and she explained to me that the oil makes the mechanical part perform optimally. She showed me a particular moving part of the machine that ceased to move suddenly. After applying the oil, the movement of the part was restored. I was amazed. I took note of that.
Prior to that time, my father once took me along to copy a song into a new tape cassette. In those days, our local musicians performed their music on a podium while some music producers carried tape recorders to record the song. After the event, people would be trooping to their shops to copy the songs into a new cassette in order to get a copy. That was exactly what my father went to do. Unlike what is obtainable presently, there was no regulation. No royalty to the musician.
While we were there, I asked the producer many questions. I asked him what button to press when recording a live performance into a cassette and he told me that the buttons to be pressed in such a situation are "Record" and "Play" altogether.
"Wow, that's lovely," I thought.
A few months after the encounter with my Aunt about the function of oil being applied on sewing machines, my father bought a cassette tape player. The player was very expensive. I could remember a mini party being organized to celebrate the purchase of the tape player. People came around to eat, drink and dance to the music that was played by the tape player. It was a lot of fun.
The following day, my parents went to the farm and I went to school. I returned from school in the afternoon and my parents weren't back from the farm. I saw it as a good opportunity to try out some things. Immediately, I reached out to my friend, Tosin, in the neighboring compound. Tosin and I had been rehearsing some styles of singing for quite a time.
I called on him to join me so that we could record a song. Tosin came and we did not waste time to put a cassette in the player to kickstart the live recording. Instead of pressing the "Record" and "Play" buttons as I was told by the music producer, I pressed only the "Record" button. We did all our freestyles for more than thirty minutes and it was time to stop and listen to what we recorded. I pressed the "Eject" button that ordinarily should have ejected the play and record buttons if previously appropriately pressed together. Owing to my mistake of pressing only the "Record" button, my pressing of the "Eject" button failed to make the "Record" button return to its initial position.
We did all we could to solve the problem but no headway. At this point, the function of lubricating oil according to my Aunt flashed through my mind.
"This is similar to what happened to my Aunt's sewing machine that she solved with oil. Let's apply it." I suggested it to Tosin.
At this point, I was becoming restless because the time of my parents' return from the farm was approaching.
I went to the sewing machine and pick the oil. We added it in drops and after each drop, we waited for some minutes to press the "Eject" button but no solution. From drops, I began to pour it in more quantities but no solution. Before I gave up that the oil wouldn't provide the solution, I emptied the bottle into the tape player.
My dad came back to see his newly acquired and much valuable cassette tape player messed up. He tried fixing the problem but his efforts weren't yielding results. He took the player to a repairman and it was discovered that the tape player had been destroyed.
My father came back home angry. I was actually expecting the worst kind of scoldings.
"If I want to flog you, I may do it beyond normal. Come and explain what happened." My father asked me.
I spent some time explaining the whole thing to him. He advised me to cultivate the habit of asking questions whenever I am curious about something before trying it out myself. The player was dumped despite that it was repairable.
"The money I will use to repair this can almost get another one." My father remarked disappointedly.
After a few months, he bought another cassette tape player and I guarded it against any harm.