Story: How i knew smaller gadgets will be better in the future

By Ehi Ekhator.

Call it a vision, i don’t care. It happened many years ago when i was in my primary school. i was a very unsuccessful but popular kid due to the fact that my mother had a provisions shop opposite my school.

Through my mother, everyone knew me including the teachers who treated me differently. I was usually spared whenever i committed a childish crime and my friends were punished. But i was terrible in terms of sport, my main hobby was trapping those innocent grasshoppers in my empty match box and practice Bruce Lee skills from the movie i watched yesterday.

I am a boy, so i do what all boys do. We play football, wrestle and other things, before i would go home, i would look like someone dragged out of the mud. But one day, i got a big challenge before me, my teachers asked me to join the race on our sport day. At first, i was reluctant but later got motivated after seeing the kids i was asked to compete with.

Deep inside me, i laughed at the teachers stupidity, i thought the teachers were joking. I was taller, bigger and if i stretched two legs, these children wont know what passed them. As usual, i thought my teachers did it to favour me.

‘On your mark, set, go!’ That was all i heard. It was like a miracle, the way the wind blew passed me. If you could remember the movie ‘the mask man’ and how he runs. i could only see those kids’ back. i tried very hard to catch up with them, it was like a drop of water in the ocean. At the time they were congratulating them, i was still on my race track trying to get to the end.  Out of shame, i ran to my mom’s shop instead of the finished line. I ran a race of shame, i was angry and embarrassed at the same time, i felt humiliated. This time around, i was now thinking it was a set up orchestrated by my teachers. i thought i was the most favoured one, how dare them humiliate me like this?

The following day, my mom dragged me to school since i refused to come on my own. How will i face those girls? Call me a child but everyone knows about girls, they are there to always check us, put us on track or sometimes make us do some nasty things trying to impress them.

When mobile phones first came to Nigeria, my father had one big Nokia phone. I was always with it and it didn’t matter how i tried to hide it in my pocket, the space was never enough. I had heard of Turaya but mine was a mighty one with an antenna. It was another embarrassment but for the sake of using a mobile phone, i had to take it along even though i couldn’t buy the credit. Whenever i heard the cricket ringing tune in the public, i would look around if someone was looking, walked to the corner and receive my call. But the embarrassing moment was when it would ring in the bus or taxi, everyone would look at me hoping to receive the call or stop it from continuous ringing. naw!, the problem is allowing them to see it, so it would be swollen on my right pocket and stopped ringing after awhile.

But from that day in my primary school, i knew time will come when small gadgets will be faster and better than big ones. Just like laptops took over super computers or mainframe.

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Story: How i knew smaller gadgets will be better in the future