The life and times of high school boys

BY TONY MASIKONDE

KENYA: This is the week when most high schools will hold the famous Leavers Bash. After studying for four years for things that, occasionally, had little meaning, it’s time for Form Four leavers to throw their feet up in the air.

I remember the high school days nostalgically. Back then, blackberry was just a fruit and tablet was that white often-bitter sediment that was prescribed by a doctor.

Weekends were a good time in our era. We could forget those boring biology classes on classification of living organisms, what the hell was Chlamydomonas?

Ugali

How has knowing that rubbish added the number of sufurias of ugali in my house? Anyway, come weekend there were certain things to look forward to.

The most popular weekend was when we hosted drama festivals, provincial games or science congress.

On the eve of such a big day, the entire school was abuzz, excitement was so high, you could almost touch it. There was a flurry of business activities and yours truly developed his entrepreneur instincts back then.

Afloat

So when girls visited our school or we were going out for such occasions, we knew certain variables had to be taken care of, if their dreams were to remain afloat.

The boys knew they had to look sharp. But the problem was some parents were unwilling or unable to bankroll the looks and the aura their sons sought to project.

Therefore, instead of missing out on the attention of beautiful lasses, boys in my high school knew how to be innovative. Yeah, these big words that business people are parading today were discovered by bright boys back then. We even lived the innovations. This is how it would work out. Not all boys had the latest shoes or a good looking trouser. So if your trouser was tattered, even if you looked like the famous actor Denzel Washington and Arsenal striker Theo Walcott rolled into one, no girl would look at you. Because all the talk would be about how she hang out with a boy with funny looking uniform.

To guard against this, most boys would hire new uniforms. Not exactly shining, for this, you would be confused with Form Ones and again no girl wanted a Form One.

Yours truly was one of those who were renowned business magnates in the uniform hiring. I usually had like ten sets of everything, sweaters, socks, trousers, and blazers…name it so long as it was legit within the school precincts.

Before Telco’s and pubs discovered off peak and happy hours, we had them in high school. Clothes would be hired on an hourly basis, and the fee was never fixed; it was down to one’s business acumen.

I remember one of the days we had provincial drama festival finals, and all they boys wanted to look the part. For me it was harvest time.

Alongside a pal of mine called Paulo, we would do roaring business leasing out shoes, shirts and blazers. For value addition, we would offer a dash of spray perfume and in case you wanted to stand from the crowd, for an extra fee, we would throw in a spurt of cheap cologne.

Payment was strictly cash, but just in case you thought you would play us, we were renowned to be ruthless in a very special way.

Winked

There was this boy who thought he was bright, so he promised to pay the money after leasing a complete package from head to toe. But, instead, kept giving us excuses every time we winked at him to pay up. Of course, having now already netted himself a girl, he thought he didn’t have to pay. It was a big mistake.

I just hired two rugby players; we excused ourselves to the girl and informed her that he had faked everything including clothes and the perfume he wore.

They proceeded to relieve him off our goods. Needless to say, that was the last time he heard of that girl and, of course, that was the last defaulter in my books — the punishment spread like bushfire throughout the school.