Lessons from my Mother - Part 1

1. Just because someone hurt you doesnt give you the license to hurt them back:

I learned this lesson from my Mum very early on, in fact I was still in primary school at the time. I have walked with a limp since I was about 3 years old. One day in school, I got into an argument with one of my best friends and she called me "one and a half leg". Of course this was a very hurtful thing for her to say to me & I retaliated in kind, calling her an orphan (both her parents had passed away a few years before). She promptly burst into tears and the whole thing turned into a huge fiasco. Long story short, my mother made me apologize to my friend. I was incensed!! I made the point that she'd started it all by making fun of my leg but my Mum insisted that I was wrong for descending to such a spiteful level. At 8 years old, this was a very hard lesson to imbibe but imbibe it I did, and to this day I am grateful that I had a mother who taught me early on that meanness doesn't pay.


2. He who has never worked for money cannot know its value:

Once, when I was about 13 years old, I went to the market with my mother. Now going to the market with my mum on any normal day was usually an exercise in frustration because it just took so damn long. However on this particular day my mum must have been on top form cause it seemed to me that we were in the market the whole freaking day. She was "pricing" everything and haggling down to the last kobo. At one particular stall it seemed to me that she had spent at least 30 mins trying to get the meatseller to shave something negligible like N2 (two naira) off his price. It all just seemed like a pointless exercise to me: either we're buying or we aren't - why spend all this time arguing over a couple of measly naira?! After a while I couldnt take it anymore and I exploded in exasperation: "Mummy, please just buy it at his price! I will give you the N2 difference when we get home!!!" My mother rarely got angy but I think it's safe to say that this was one of those occasions when she really lost it with me! I thought she was going to rip my head off right there in the middle of the market!!!!!!!! She basically chewed into me, calling me a spoiled brat: "ejo e ko!! o le mo iyi owo tori o sise owo ijo kan laiye e!! omo k'omo!!!!!" Loosely translated, this means, "it's not your fault! how can you know the value of money when you've never worked a day in your life! silly child!!!" Suffice it to say that I imbibed the lesson right there and then - my mother worked hard for her money and as such she didnt trifle with it; any child of hers would do well do to adopt just such an attitude. I never again made the mistake of taking money for granted.