Gate of the mind

It was such a happy memory, but in reality, it was a nightmare that I failed to learn from until junior secondary school.

When I was young, I loved Indian movies. It is common knowledge that their stunt tricks were top-notch—meaning super unbelievable—which made their films so captivating. Watching them was easily one of the best parts of my childhood, but it led to a very big problem.

To be fair, it didn't start with Indian movies.

When I was younger, my family moved into an upstairs apartment. During the holidays, my mum would buy us Home Alone. It was fun at first, but it eventually got boring. My older siblings decided to step things up and brought home Spider-Man, Superman, and several Jackie Chan movies. Those DVD days were the best; even waiting for discs to load was fun with friendly neighbors around.

When we played, we never said, "Let's fight kung fu." We always said, "Let's fight Jackie Chan!"

That fun almost turned fatal when my stupidity took over. I went to the veranda, stuffed my small body through the railings, and prepared to jump down while declaring I was Spider-Man. Thank goodness my mum had natural spider-senses that kicked in just in time. If not, I would have been dead. I learned my lesson after a proper beating that day. That little home trauma reminded me to stay away from the railings, but it didn't mean I was any wiser.

Next came stair-jumping. My parents cautioned and beat me for it, but I stopped caring. After you’ve swallowed enough slippers and discipline without understanding what "film tricks" are, you just keep doing it. I practiced landing quietly for years until I could do it without my parents hearing a sound.

Then came the turning point.

One day, I went to visit neighbors on the top floor of our two-story building. Their staircase was higher, which meant more room for stunts. I pulled off a jump on the first day and felt like the main character in Mission: Impossible. I left feeling like Baahubali.

The next day, reality hit.

I woke up with a twisted shoulder. My right arm was temporarily paralyzed, and I couldn't dare go home to tell my parents. I sat on the stairs until some movement returned, but everything felt heavy. When I got home, I acted like the quietest, most well-behaved boy in the world. If you were my mum, you would have thought, "God, you have finally answered my prayers."

My arm was functional, but I couldn't raise it past 30 degrees.

That became a major issue at my Nigerian school, where the default punishment for a noisy class was mass punishment: "Raise up your hands and close your eyes!"

I almost cried. The choice was clear: raise my arm or take six strokes of the cane and get sent to the principal’s office, where canes swam like fishes. Omo, I suffered. I had to use my left hand to hoist my right arm into the air, making my left side bear the full burden. As weeks passed and mobility slowly returned to about 90 degrees, I would form an "L-shape" with my arm during punishments—at least when the teacher wasn't looking too closely. But whenever a strict teacher barked, "Raise it up straight! 180 degrees at 12 o'clock! Spread them!" it was pure hell.

Eventually, I confessed to my mum. She massaged the arm for me, accompanying the treatment with a heavy dose of hurtful words rather than physical beatings. (Thank God my brother wasn't an anatomist back then; he would have given my parents a heart attack explaining the severity of the injury.) After three months of silent suffering, the arm finally healed.

Yet, my foolishness had not completely run its course. Driven by peer pressure, I moved on to jumping off the school staircases.

One day, a classmate nicknamed "Locomotion"—a term he picked up in basic science—bragged about jumping from the very top. I was torn between belief and disbelief, but I forgot to ask the most important question: Why didn't he ever do it again?

Word spread, and soon I was routinely clearing four steps at a time without issues. I felt like a champion until someone jumped from one step higher in front of a crowd. Refusing to settle for a draw, I attempted a jump from near the top landing.

Crack!

I landed hard on the sole of my foot. I forced a champion’s smile to hide the pain, which subsided after a few minutes—only to return the next morning feeling like hot water poured on my bone. I couldn't step on the ground without a shock going straight to my brain.

Again, I couldn't tell my parents. If word reached the school, the teachers and my parents would have combined forces for a quadruple beating.

That was the day I finally learned. I was in junior secondary school when that final jump happened, and it forced me to start questioning reality versus fiction. Many other silly things happened afterward, but that was the day I officially lost interest in dangerous childhood stunts.