The other day I was having a private moment in my bathroom. I casually looked over my right shoulder on to my right hip and my eyes were immediately drawn to a two-inch scar that I had on my backside. I immediately began to reminisce.

My grandmother had a sofa bed that was made of pure wood. It was made a little a higher and a little narrower than a regular single bed, but had an elevated area at the head section that was supposed to have served as a pillow.

The younger generations today may only know of the modern day sofa beds are made up of mattress, padding and of cushioned fabrics for much comfort.

My sisters and I used to play school on top of the sofa bed that was in living room and we would often use the wooden partition that was painted pink as our “blackboard”.

My mother who was a teacher would take stubs of chalk for us to use, but her ideal place for a blackboard was not on the living room wall. So she would often chastise us and warn us against using the living room wall for that purpose. But being the mischievous imps that we were we would still continue to write on the wall, especially when she wasn’t there.

Well this Saturday morning in particular, my mother was outside washing our dirty clothes when I decided that I would be the “teacher of the day”. I was about five or six years old at the time and was too short to reach up to where we called the top of the blackboard, so with the help of my sisters, I put our Grandmother’s bread pan on top of the sofa and climbed on top of it to write. The bread pan was made of tin metal, rectangular in shape and had one of those nice pictures of bread being sliced painted on the side.

To be honest, using the bread pan as a platform has always been a regular practice for us, because to stand on the sofa alone would not have given us enough space to write what we wanted.

Our regular climbing on the bread pan took its toll that morning. My weight was the “last straw that broke the camel’s back”, It caused the pan to split open at the seams and the cover of the pan started to cave in. Loosing my balance I fell on one of the freshly exposed edges, which sliced its way up into the hip section of my butt.

Needless to say, there was weeping and wailing and blood all over. My Grandmother took me to the bathroom, had me washed and cleaned up then squeezing the mouth of the cut together she covered the area with two good old “Band Aids”. I was then put to rest on the same sofa bed to begin my recuperation.

Where was my mother all this time? Well she was outside still washing. Giving the poor clothes a much harder scrubbing than they deserved and quarrelling like hell, saying that it was “hard of hearing that caused it to happen”. She was so hopping mad that she didn’t want to see me or my ass. Deep down I believe she was glad that it was only that small cut, and that it was on my ass, the place where I should have been whipped for not hearing.

Well to cheer me up from that day, My Aunt Vista came to visit and she chatted comfortingly to me for a while.