Play acting was our favourite pastime. Equipped with old boxes, sticks, ropes, palm fronds, tin cans, and an abundance of imagination, we transformed ourselves into gallant knights, soccer stars, Olympic champions, cowboys, and anybody else we cared to be.
King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table were our favourite alter egos. My parents had bought me a hefty edition of the book, and I pored over it for hours, transported to Camelot, and immersed in the adventures of the knights. Whenever I got tired of reading, I would round up my brothers, and the gardener’s son, and we would re-enact the battles and adventures that I had just finished reading. Naturally, as the only one of the group who was intimately familiar with King Arthur and his knights, I got to direct all the proceedings. It was I who decided which role each person would play. As the oldest and wisest of the group, I always got to play King Arthur and, needless to say, I always emerged victorious: the only one left standing, after the most vicious and bloody battles. Sir Galahad and Sir Lancelot were my favourite knights, and I assigned those roles to my motley band of cohorts as a politician doling out largesse to his cronies. If I was pleased with you on the day, you got to be Lancelot, and you got to win all your battles until you faced me and then you lost…gallantly of course. Sometimes a member of my band would grumble about having to play one of the lesser knights and refuse to take further part in the game. Since it was no fun having a battle with only two or three knights, I had no choice but to placate the disgruntled knight by elevating him to one of the elite roles. Having thus lured the knight back into the game, I would then rewrite the script and have him slain in a David and Goliath-type encounter with a lowly knight. This usually brought howls of protest from the slain knight, but these were usually cut short when I showed the account of his demise in the pages of the book and asked him to read it for himself. The aggrieved knight usually backed off at this point (my compatriots were all still learning to read and were also firm believers in the doctrine of separation of work and play – the playground was not the place for practicing their reading.) Often, my scripts would be contradictory: Galahad might vanquish Lancelot today, only to be slain by a lowly Sir Uwaine, in the same battle tomorrow. This should not be surprising, since I made up all the scripts. Anyway, nobody seemed to notice and if they did, they did not complain. And so we played out Camelot in our backyard until twilight forced us to abandon our adventures for another day.
When we weren’t playing Camelot, we were re-enacting the World Cup, the Olympic games, or the Second World War (as portrayed in the television series Combat). On these occasions, I was a little disadvantaged since we all watched the events on television, and everyone knew who the winners and losers were. Still as the oldest, I got the choicest parts: Pele, Jesse Owens, Vic Morrow and Kola Abdullai (Nigeria’s reigning sprint champion at the time)
Sometimes our fierce engagements claimed innocent victims. Like the day my sister’s doll was decapitated by an overzealous Sir Galahad. Wailing inconsolably, my sister took the mangled doll to my grand aunt, who promptly confronted Sir Galahad (my youngest brother) with the pitiful remains. “Why did you do it?” she asked angrily. “Because she (my sister) is not one of us; she doesn’t have a partner”, piped my little brother. My grand aunt reflected on this cryptic response for a few moments and then replied in a surprisingly calm and understanding tone. “But she does have a partner. Come to my room and let me show you her partner.” The naïve and unsuspecting Sir Galahad, failing to detect the menacing glint in her eyes, sauntered off to meet this mysterious partner. I was distracted at the time: engaged in mortal combat with the evil Black knight (who was trying to disguise himself as the garage door post). I soon dispatched the Black knight to his maker and returned to my men who told me what had happened. Sensing a trap, I galloped full speed on my trusty stick, (I mean steed) towards my man, and snatched him away at the very moment my grand aunt emerged from her room. She was wielding a cane she normally concealed beside her bed for the express purpose of ‘educating’ scoundrels, wayward knights, and the like. “Come, let me show you her partner, you rascal”, she beckoned. Needless to say, we all fled with our tails between our legs.