Nipping That Superiority Complex Off
I used to have a superiority complex. Yes. I just said that out loud. Pheww! But…let me backtrack a bit to give this context. Growing up, we didn’t have much. Well, the big house and the flashy cars would have deceived many people but we who were members of the family knew we didn’t have much. Okay…we could eat three square meals and our mum always made sure we had nice biscuits, chocolates and sweets. We had cable TV and we went to the amusement park once. Looking at it now, we had a lot! I know many of friends who didn’t have as much. In spite of all these, I felt we didn’t have a lot. I knew early on that the big house and cars were a great façade. My belief was cemented when we were always the last to get text books, uniforms or other school stuff generally. In fact, there was this term when I was in Primary 4 or so when I couldn’t participate in Physical Education because I (we) didn’t have sportswear. One of my favorite teachers – Late Mrs. Williams – took pity on us the following term and said we could exercise but only at the back. To add to that, we were driven for school fees from Nursery one until we graduated in SS3. Every single term! (*laughing like crazy. I have always found this line to be intensely funny). Anyway, we learned early not to ask for stuff like the latest Cortina shoes, or any form of video games, Discman or Pokémon anything. We learned to make do with what we had and for many years; which meant we were not among the cool kids. Cue in ‘Cool Kids’ by EchoSmith – though they were two decades ahead of the time – and you have my biggest yearning as a child. I looked at my family, looked at the near future and decided the only thing that was going to get me out of that predicament was my intellect. So I read. Books, magazine, newspapers, pamphlets, labels on food, medicine and cosmetics, banners and whatever I could lay my eyes (or hands) on. And then I watched a whole lot of television. Do not mind the naysayers; you can learn as much from television as you can from books. Some people are imaginative while others are visual. I think it is unfair to expect everyone to learn like you. Anyway, I learned and opened my mind to the possibilities that lay beyond my immediate environment. I knew what a pizza was (even though I only recently had one. Hey! Don’t laugh!) and I could vividly describe cities I had never been to, people I had never met and events I could only aspire to attend. If you didn’t know that at that time, I had never even left Kaduna, you would have thought I was well travelled and very knowledgeable. So the more I learned, the more people were willing to be friends with me. Well, some said I was funny but I don’t think so. Anyway, while I wasn’t a rich kid, I was gradually becoming a popular kid and best of all, a ‘cool kid’. Then I got cocky. I began to measure people and choose my friends based on how ‘intelligent’ they were. I must clarify that I don’t necessarily mean ‘book smart’. I chose friend who knew stuff that was cool; like Kenny who producing music at age 13, or Nathaniel who made innovative stuff from bad electrical appliances or Shayo who could make you laugh with the most mundane things ever. I also chose friends who knew a lot of bad things (*wink). Soon enough, I was friends with almost everyone. That however didn’t stop me from mentally correcting them when I thought they goofed. It happened with everyone; friends, family, people I had a bone to pick with and those I had nothing to do with. I was so cocky in my ‘intelligence’ that I became blind to my flaws. I needed that chip pulled the hell off my shoulders and you can bet life was willing to play bad cop. The first chisel to my inflated sense of importance was my grades in school. You see, all through primary and secondary school, I didn’t need to read too hard to come out top of my class. All I needed to do was attend lectures and I was smooth sailing. Then I got to the university. I was so confident in myself that I didn’t even go to class. Then my first semester result came out. What a wawu! I knew I had goofed. Instead of correcting my mistakes, I buried myself in even further. I was at every social event and partying into the early morn. My results kept getting worse. When I finally got the party girl tamed, the deal had been done. Now, while school results are not a true test of intelligence, it would have been good to apply myself to my books. I graduated poorly – don’t worry, I will give you the full gist someday – but my mind was open to the possibility that I was not as intelligent as I thought I was after all. Then I got a job on radio. I was an on-air-personality shaping the minds of listeners in Yola, Adamawa State. Apart from my problem with ‘R’ – damn you letter ‘R’ – I thought I was fantastic on air. Yes, that was told to me a couple of times but even if it wasn’t, I would still have felt fantastic. And no; it wasn’t self-confidence. After a year doing what I love, we had a training on Presentation from a consulting firm that is a really big deal in the country. Our trainer listened to us on air and told us that our pronunciations were barely there (at best) and horrible at worst. She said even the best of us
