PRANK TO PAIN

Have you ever tried to prank someone and it backfired on you? Well, I have experienced that.

Growing up, I was surrounded by a lot of family and friends. We did not exactly live together, but we are all very close-knit and so, although we bridged the geographical dustance by keeping in touch, we made it a ritual to all travel down to the village every Christmas break.

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My grandma was very lively and fun, so we spent a lot of time with her during our visits.. Not far off from our house was a community school. The school was big, very big. We usually had the whole space to ourselves, especially during the break when classes weren't ongoing. We loved to play there.

Not too far from the school was a bush. On one occasion, one of my cousins, Ogechi who lived in the village with my grandma, had told us, "you people should never go close to that bush area."

When asked why, she only said, "don't just go there. It's dangerous." Nothing more. I had assumed she was talking about getting bitten by insects or entering a bush trap, but I cared less.

I had this cousin, Ebube. Ebube was three years older than I was. In a way, we were completely different. He was the stubborn type; wild and always excited to try out new things. I, on the other hand, was a bit gentle, a 'play-by-the-rules' kind of person. I was twelve when this happened. Ebube was fourteen.

On this day however, we were extremely bored. We wanted fun. Strolling around, we saw another cousin of ours, Chinwe, coming from a distance. Chinwe was two years younger than me.

We then decided to prank her by scaring her out of her wits. We hid in a small cluster of trees and bushes (same bush we were asked to not go near. It was just a few trees, but it provided good cover), along the path she was to take.

After waiting a couple of minutes, she finally drew closer to where we were hiding and we jumped out to the road, giving her a good scare.

About five minutes later, I my body started to itch. Just a few spots on my body. Later, the itch became unbearable. My arms and legs were really itching me.

It was then I noticed that Ebube was also scratching his body. His, was however, more severe and urgent than mine. He seemed to be scratching the whole of his body.

Soon, we were scratching our bodies like people being flogged with an invisible cane. It almost looked like we were dancing.

We ran back home to our grandma, who upon seeing me crying, asked what was wrong. We couldn't offer any explanations. It was then I narrated to her the prank and everything else I had done that day.

Unknown to Ebube and I, the mini forest we had gone to hide in had nettle leaves (more commonly known as Agbara in the Igbo language) in them.

Mine was a bit mild only because had I just stayed at the entrance of the mini forest. Ebube had gone deep into the cluster, hoping to take more cover.

My cousin had then complicated matters by having a bath. He used like six buckets of water as the itch wasn't subsiding at all. Instead, the more he bathed, the more the itching increased. It turns out you're not supposed to pour water on the spot of the itch.

Later though, Grandma applied oil and a concoction of sorts and the itching reduced significantly.
When Ogechi heard what happened to us, she asked us, "did I not tell you all to not go near thar bush?"

"When we asked why, you only said that it was dangerous. Why didn't you tell us what that implied?" I asked sadly.

"Does dangerous not mean anything to you? Must I spell everything out?" she said.

"How could..." my cousin, Ebube, began to say but ended up choking.

"That's enough. I'm sorry, don't cry. Next time, listen," Ogechi said and rubbed Ebube's head fondly.

Since that day, I stopped playing pranks on people.
I remembered this now because this kid jumped out of hiding in a bid to scare his mum but only ended up hurting himself.

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Greetings!