It was on a valentine's day, when i was much younger. I knew that the fourth bottle in my hand would be the last for the day.
I was not totally drunk, I was in the boundary of sobriety and intoxication, enjoying that state every drunkard desires; the state where he keeps telling himself that he is not drunk but draws every word he speaks so not to ‘mess up’. That was the state I kept my brain as I followed the argument between 2 drunks in Mama Ejima’s beer parlour.

“Ebiggy, do you know that you can play with your mother’s breast” One of them said “But if you go anywhere near your father’s penis… you should expect dirty slap”

“Then he no be your Papa” Ebiggy busted out “I touched my Papa thing this afternoon and if you look at my face, you will see that I wasn’t slapped”

Surprisingly, the drunk moved closer to Ebiggy and inspected his two cheek and shook his head
“I still don’t believe you” he said
“Set your money, make we go my house” Ebiggy cut in “My Papa go dey house. I go grab his brukus and he will do nothing”

Drunks, I muttered before I paid my bills and staggered home but the information I got from their argument staggered home with me.

“I am lucky” I told myself “Mama and Papa will be in the house. I will find out if Ebiggy was being truthful or not”

When I got home, Mama was in the kitchen. I tried to act normal but trust mothers, there are very few things you can hide from them.

“See what you’ve done to yourself” she scolded me “Make sure you take your bath before entering the bedroom”
But the words fell on deaf ears, I really wanted to carry out the experiment. I moved closer to her and touched her breast but she was really angry with me.

“I am not playing with you” she said “At this stage of your life, you have turned into a drunk”

I ignored her; I lifted the already fallen lump on her chest and allowed it to fall freely;
“You don’t know when one is serious” She said “Just leave me alone”

I left her and moved straight to the sitting room where I knew that Papa would be so to carry out the control experiment. When I opened the curtain, Papa was sitting on a wooden bench; his eyes were glued to the television set, beside him was an empty bottle of Aromatic schnapps which I believed he drained some minutes before I entered. I stretched my neck to see what was being televised and right inside the television box were Undertaker and John Cena. My presence distracted him and he shifted his gaze to the door where I stood;
“Good evening sir” I involuntarily said

He kept mute, disgustingly stared at me for some seconds and returned his attention to the wrestling match. At that moment, my eagerness to conclude the experiment started dropping, there was high possibility that he would not just slap me but may be tempted to experiment some of the moves by Undertaker or John Cena, even the empty bottle of schnapps would assist him in returning me to my default settings.

Fool, he finally said without taking another glance at me.
“You are not ashamed of yourself” he continued “Get out from my sight before I get angrier"

Immediately, the whole alcohol in my system evaporated. I knew that I won’t need to complete the experiment anymore. It was pure Game over; any attempt to come closer to him would spell doom.

I did nothing nor say anything bad, the only thing I said was 'good evening' and he became furious, I wondered what would have happened if I had stretched my hand towards his brukus.

Ebiggy is drunk, I concluded, he nearly led me into my untimely grave.

As I trembled back to the kitchen where Mama was, I memorize the Lesson I learnt from the beer parlour:

Lesson 1: Never experiment everything you hear from a drunk. It will be safer to stupidly believe - but don’t experiment.

#TheMemoOfOziiBaba

Ok