POP'S FLIGHT SCHEDULE

“Hi, my name is blah blah, am 20yrs old and I have no social life.”

That was how a friend of mine put the update on her facebook page the other day.

(Hold it right there, I see some of y’all already tryna search for blah blah on facebook? Ah ha I got her identity protected from ye vultures circling tryna pounce on the next lonely girl!) Lmao!

I punched in a comment asking, “Social life being?”

Her reply was, “This is my life, wake up, go to work, get back at 6pm, make dad dinner, clean house, shower and sleep….repeat the same thing the next day and the next day and on and on”

She went on bout how her dad is forcing her not to have a social life and shit, I told her I could relate because I’ve been there and done that.

Livin’ wit My Dad

I started staying with my pops for real in my teens, before then I’d come on holidays and in no time, I was back in school and to disturbing my granny’s peace (and she loved it). I had freedom, I could roam everywhere. On weekends, I and my friends would sometime play soccer all day, only breaking to run home and chow and then we back at it again.

Wake Up Call

My final secondary school result came and I banged it in style! I fuckin’ failed in red colors (the moment you see them red marks in your report card, you already knew what it was). My result was filled with tributaries of red with a dash of black here and there, it woulda been better if I was absent from those exams cause I would still have failed anyways but it woulda been a more honorable failure, wouldn’t it? I guess not.

That was the final straw; Pops’ had had enough, it was time to get his son’s lazy ass to shape up (he said because my granny treated me like some kinda small god that was why I failed). So he sent word that my lil punk ass (not that I was really a troublesome kid back then, matter of fact, I was jus’ your average boy next door) should be shipped to him. Looking back now, the manner in which I went to Pops was kinda reminiscent of the way Will (of the Fresh Prince) was sent to live with his Aunt and Uncle Phil in Bel-Air.

To me back then, pops was like a superman, a dictator, a savior and a whole lot of things all rolled into one, when that nigga spoke, it was law! If anybody could put the fear of God in me, the good captain would be the man (that’s my lil nick name for him).

In our first talk (when I say our talk, I meant, he talked and I listened with my eyes firmly glued to the ground, there is no lookin’ the almighty Captain in the eye), he told me told me it was time I pulled my saggin’ pants up, knuckled down and got my fuckin’ grades up.

 “Son, I know you got potentials but you’re just too damn lazy. You don’t want to apply yourself”, he said.

Pops said those words so often they were tattooed in my medulla oblongata, they still fuckin’ ring in my head today. Every time I fuck up, those words hit me over the head like a fuckin’ pestle slammed into a mortal.

Reading

I knuckled down like Pops told me to, and nah, I didn’t exactly read all the time. After breakfast every morning, especially if the big man wasn’t flying, I would be at the dinnin’ table readin’. Did I say reading? Well, may be 50% of the time but the other 50%, I would be there tryin’ my hardest to stay awake, fighting a losing battle with sleep (dozing, nodding my head against the table and shit) but guess what? The moment Pops steps out of the crib, sleep would step out of my eyes!

Friends

I had a couple of friends who lived in the same neighborhood and three of those had the same name; they were named Femi. Me goin out to kick it with them boys was a no-no (imagine, Pops tellin’ me, “don’t come round here tellin’ me you got friends. You know nobody in this city, ok?”). That left me no choice but to do alotta sneaking around (can’t let my boys know I wasn’t free like ‘em).

Since Pops was operatin’ a mini prison and I could go out only when he went out or go away on flight, I and my brothers would usually plan our outings with his fight schedule (the timetable was usually prepared for a 15 day period with the number of flights, standbys and off days all indicated). I would sneak into his room and copy it and that right there was what I used to use to plan my movement with!

Me and my lil lady back then used to live in the same close and she understood the kinda martial law her lil caged assed boyfriend was livin’ under; Pops had a rep for being a no nonsense man, kinda quiet and never poked his nose in nobody’s bi’ness. My girlfriend would usually come through whenever she saw that the (airline) crew bus that sometimes comes to pick up the good captain had left.

And of course I’d miscalculated a few times and my ass was caught out cold. You know, I’d gone out sometimes thinkin’ the old man was 33,000ft up in the sky somewhere, cruising on some scheduled flight to some city and I would come back to the crib and Pops was already there, coolin’!

I remember all that now with a smile on my face but back then, that shit wasn’t really funny. It was on the one hand, tryin’ to be an obedient boy to the old man, and on the other hand, tryna to appear like I got the same kinda freedom my homeboys enjoyed at their different homes.