Nwulia's CD special: Becoming a Child Again.

These days,  it seems i can't write without being passionate, emotion-laden, or sounding angry. I guess i try to sound real when i write about issue hurting or affecting so many around me. But, today, i just wanna celebrate with the kids, i wanna be a child again, I want to discover this playful part of me. So  It is another Children's day today; *gets my dusty vuvuzela, wipes it, and blows it* and a Nigerian child is all happy today because it is a day he/she gets to spare the 'torture' of sitting down in a class on a weekday. Today is Wednesday? yes, it is.

I know there's tension revolving around handover of leadership in the country soon, but i wanna ask, in your childhood, what does Children's day means to you? I will tell you mine. Get prepared. I know you can't wait.

Children's day meant a lot to me till i finished Secondary school. It meant escape from boring classes by boring teachers; it meant i can request for some outing on that day - not all the time it turned positive; it meant going to Eagles' Square for a marchpast; it meant ice-cream, meatpie. buns, or the packaged water saccharine with colours inside a branded transparent nylon. It meant getting drops of luxury;  It also meant staying at home and doing more house chores, and wishing i can escape back to school and stay through the 'boring' classes.

The mood at home determines how it will be spent, and how good you were prior to that day also counts. For the day the Children's day Santa decides to favour me, i was being rewarded with watching the march past live - no TV things. An adult will take me and other kids to the square, i always remember wearing my ike-akpati (my finest apparel), and tugging behind, with this once-in-a-longtime smile. Before we leave the house, all of us were instructed to hold our ears with seriousness attached to life and death.

"Always hold the next person beside you, don't leave your neighbour behind and don't wander off,  IF NOT......." The adult fellow will bellow to us.

I never got to know the sentence after the IF NOT, but the squeezing of the brows, the twitching of the mouth, the immediate exit of smiles, and the general air of gravity, was enough to know that the sentence after the IF NOT should not be dared.

In school, i wasn't all that athletic and popular type, except in books, so that ruled out me ever being selected to represent the school in marchpasts. But i always kid myself and keep on trying out with the team each year; but somehow, the badluck Fairy always pick me out even before the teachers do. So somehow, i experience the drills of the marchpast, but, fail to feel the frill of waving to the crowd in sequential and rehearsed movements, at the field, on that day.

Children's day also meant that i get to hang out with the cute and well-do kids - at a distance - and wish through the event that i can wear half of their gorgeous clothes, really belong, abi get to be accepted, in their circle and being given the royal treatment i watch on TV's alone. I guess Children's day was the time i saw clearly the gap between the rich and the poor. Oops! I think i sounded serious just now. Forgive me. Today is just for happy memories of Children's day.

I think i better stop here so that i won't attempt wandering off. I am still scared of the IF NOT.

Happy Children's Day young ones and young at heart - like me.