It was just another day after school; the bus was on the last leg of the school run for the day, and the holdup was, well, like your typical Naija traffic.
The kids on the school bus had become restless, as is expected of children who are ten to five years old. We were bored and adventurous, so much so that after an exhausting day at school, we decided to play ‘hide and seek’ in the 14-seater bus, all seven of us. I still wonder to this day what we were thinking; where does one hide in a school bus? *BBM confused smiley*.
So immediately the ‘seeker’ closed her eyes, I looked around mischievously for a good place to hide and then the teeny weeny space between the last seat and the boot of the bus caught my eye. I hurriedly jumped in, thinking what a genius I was to have found such a wonderful hiding spot.
As a kid I wasn't a huge fan of food so squeezing my six year old frame in between the last seat and boot wasn’t difficult at all. I settled in and held my breath excitedly, thinking to myself ‘they are never gonna find me here’. I was totally oblivious to the danger I was in.
My thoughts were in rapid succession, adrenalin due to excitement, coursing through my brains… for a moment, I forgot where I was, and leaned comfortably on the boot of the bus.
You see, I can’t really explain what happened next, but I suddenly found myself rolling on the tarred road, staring at the bus with its boot wide open, driving away with the sound of an approaching fuel tanker behind me!! As luck would have it, the traffic had suddenly cleared up and the cars on the queue were moving rapidly.
For a moment, I couldn’t believe it; I just lay where I had fallen, my little brain trying to put the pieces of what had happened together.
Hearing something in the distance, I looked up;
‘Gonny RUN! Gonny RUN!! Gonny RUN!!!’
It sounded like the mantra soccer fans chant in the stadium during a live match. My school mates were clapping and cheering, kneeling on the back seat of the bus and watching like it was an episode of ‘Wonder Woman’ (instead of the olodo children to alert the bus driver, too much television I guess).
The driver was chatting away with my older brother in the front seat and had no inkling of what was happening behind him.
I panicked and started running crazily after the bus, just as my friends wanted me to, but the bus kept moving farther away. Motorists honked their horn and drew the attention of the bus driver and the bus screeched to a halt about a hundred meters away and there I was, panting in the middle of the road, the bruises from the fall beginning to hurt.
When I finally got on the bus, I wanted to cry but when I saw the awe on my friends’ faces, I braved it up. I cried and bawled at home though, hehehe.
In the end, I wasn’t a super hero but I remember I was the laughing stock of my siblings for years as I became ‘the girl that fell out of the school bus’.
