JIJI NDOGO: The test I never wanted coming

“Is that what I think it is?” I ask.

She smiles coyly. “You’re going to paint your trousers brown, aren’t you?”

The letter invites me to the one test I wished I’d not have to repeat. And ‘invite’ doesn’t even begin to cover how mandatory this test is. Why does it scare me so much?

When I was in high school, I dreaded the physics test. Not because I was bad at science, which I was, but because nothing beats failing at everyday stuff. I mean, everyone is always talking about the “laws of physics”. You can’t jump too high because physics forbids it. Neither can you walk on the ceiling or drive a car at 90mph through a 90-degree corner without rolling and ending up looking like an abused sausage.

As my teacher put it, “Our daily lives are controlled by the laws of physics.” Imagine then, how embarrassing it is to fail at the very stuff that controls your life.

“Makini, how don’t you understand gravity?” Mr Laini would say. “How do you explain why you aren’t floating past Mars as we speak?”

And I would sit there thinking, “But Mr Laini, I float past mass every Sunday. Father Giuseppe Spaghettini has a habit of dragging every sermon past lunch!”

And it wasn’t just words that sound the same that tricked me. Some physics hit me a different kind of way.

For instance, the law that said, “For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction” had a very different connotation. To me, it explained perfectly why Susannah in class 6C didn’t take kindly to me telling her I loved more than all the grains of sand in the ocean. That every time I didn’t see her, food tasted like soil. Or that I would slay giants if that was the test so I could spend break times with her.

For every action (my admiration of Susannah), there was an equal and opposite reaction (Susannah hating my guts).

What I’m trying to say is, failure in physics is failure in life. You might as well forget how to walk if you don’t know which part friction plays in that whole deal, right?

And my problems didn’t end there. Of all the tests I dreaded in the police academy, marksmanship topped the list. Ever since I was young, I couldn’t throw a rock and hit anything to save my life. My aim was so bad that my friends teased that if I tossed a pebble into the air, it would fall back down and miss the ground. So, imagine my dread when my training officer handed me a gun and pointed to a target.

“That’s a bad guy coming at you with a weapon,” he said. “Shoot him before he kills you.”

Needless to say, I killed the walls and the air around the bad guy but never touched a hair on his head. I remember a friend giving me some pointers (let’s call them cheats) right before the test, good enough for me to get through the exam. But same as I can’t remember the friend’s name or face, neither do I remember his helpful pointers.

Imagine then, how I feel as I read the letter from my superiors “inviting” me to take a mandatory marksman test that I must pass if I want to retain my crown and uniform.

“Whatever you do,” Sophia advises, “don’t expect me to wash your poopy trousers.”