It All Started With A Dare

It all started with a dare, not exactly a dare on my mother’s part she just said it would be impossible to do something, I looked, I sighed and I asked "because of the steering?" and the next day I regretted my attempt to do the impossible.

My mother asked me to warm the car the previous day since we didn’t take it out very often, to warm the car, you don’t need to move it, just turn it on, wait for it to warm up, and then turn it off.
I checked what my mum said was impossible, I paced through the small passage to and fro, and went to the car to carry out the impossible operation.

She said it would not be possible to turn the car around at the front of the house; that is, the front facing the back and the back facing the front. It seems easy right, but the place to do the turning was what you’d call petite.
I started the car, it was an old model golf with a manual transmission, you know, "the stick shift".

I pressed the clutch and it moved forward a bit without even starting the car, I immediately applied the brakes. I then started the car, and put the gear stick to the top left, to reverse it back to the position I met it.

The arm break was probably already down or I instinctively put it down. I applied more pressure on the clutch and move the gear stick to the right a little bit, I had to put it to neutral first before going into that position.
It is in the position, the car is in the first gear, the best for whatever it was I was trying to do.

I double-checked if it was on gear one, I will admit, I have mixed it up with the third gear a couple of times and well I didn’t want to use a high gear for whatever it is I wanted to do.

I started going forward, I forget to let you know but the car I was driving had an issue, the steering wasn’t working well, according to the engineers "what is connecting the steering to the engine is hooked" and since it was still usable my mum proponed the fixing till further notice.

I got to the dangerous curved corner, I managed to pull the steering my way while applying the brake little by little to control it, and then it happen.

Yeah "it" happened, I removed my leg from the brake, pressed the clutch a little more, and then I pressed the throttle, the car wasn’t moving, I turned it off and got out to check what was going on and when I saw what has happened, all that came to my mind was my aunty’s voice, warning not to park on the soakaway, what have I done I mumble.

I entered the car again pressed the clutch, started the engine and then put the gear to reverse so that I could reverse my way out of there, the front tire kept rolling, the opening was getting bigger, and I haven’t even gotten close to the sun, yet I got burnt.

The front left tire was inside a hole in the soakaway’s cover head, a hole that was made by the weight of the car on it.

I switched off the car, got out, and tried pushing it, but it wasn’t even moving, I called a close friend of mine to come as fast as he could, he said he was busy but in two minutes I saw him running towards my house, he flew the short fence to get here quickly instead of passing the long way and coming through the gate, the jump wasn’t as cool as it sounds, but a little badass that I might have hoped.

He must have heard the distress in my voice, he said he was busy, I knew he would come but I didn’t expect he would be here this early we pushed, I placed the car at neutral and we pushed again, he pushed - I drove, he suggested we raise the car by jacking it up a little bit, he had to borrow another jack because ours couldn’t work, the first was slacked and the second was a new type which couldn’t fit under, because the distance of the car to the ground was small, we used the jack, I was a little scared of the weight distribution because the jack was still on the sockaway.

I added my second jack till it was possible to remove the first jack he borrowed.

I kept observing the weight distribution, I didn’t want the car and the both of us to fall inside the soakaway, after I placed some stones at the front of the left and right back tire and the front of the right front tire, we pushed and the car went back.

The car went back but it expanded the hole and the front left tire was still in the hole. The hole was bigger, the countdown began in my head.

I asked that he call his elder brother, he called I spoke, and I explained as vaguely as I could without compromising the importance of his presence. I felt like he was the only option I has left on the hot seat to win the million naira prize.

He came, he observed, and he looked at the car like he was born for this moment as if it was the reason he studied engineering.

Bring strong planks he said I rushed and brought three because I was struggling to bring a long one, he asked me to leave it, after observing the planks I brought, he asked me to bring the long one that he initially asked me to leave. I started praying to God, "please help me, just help me." I could feel the soakaway getting weaker every second that we spent.

At the front, below the bonnet, we placed a stone on the ground, and on the stone, we placed the jack we initially removed from the side of the car, he started to raise the car up and after a while, the car moved back itself and liked before it created a bigger hole, so he asked us to also place big stones at the back of the two left and right back tires and at the back of the front right tire. I could imagine the whole soakaway crack and open with the car completely inside.

He repeated the process but this time added some wood with the stone before placing the jack on it, he then lifted the jack up and slowly the front left tire began to come up slowly.

When the front left tire was up, he instructed that we placed the strongest plank which was also the longest under the left tire till it reached the good ground, he lowered the jack and removed it, and the tire was now resting on the plank we just placed and he said we could push now, we did and the car was off the soakaway, the adrenaline that ran away when I was pushing the car alone at the beginning was back, I could feel myself save the whole world with our problem-solving skill.

My friend and his brother saved my day, I tried to reverse the car back to where it was, and they pushed - I drove, we all pushed nothing seemed to work, and the ground was slippery, but in the end, we prevailed. After a long period of pushing, rotating and me breaking parts of the block fence, I successfully put the car back where it was.

A mechanical engineer, an human health educator to be and me a farmer who programs, we did it.

I thanked them, they went back to their home and I sat down, relieved, lost in my thought, wishing I had a million naira to give them each, what better friends would I have asked for at this moment? I questioned myself.

I walked past the broken ground, the broken fence, my mum’s lovely turmeric plant that I smashed with the car, and then the grand problem, the big opening in the soakaway.

I felt like running away.

I knelt for my creator and thanked him, I knew it could have been worse, I figured the car must have known it could have been worse, she could have been drowning her engines in the faeces and urine, my friend and his brother knew it could have been worse, so I had to thank God, I had to let him know; I know that it could have been worse, I had to thank him it wasn’t worse.

Knowing my parents were most likely going to kill me, I thought of a lie, I could lie my way out of this, I convinced myself. I imagined a lie that would make my parents comfort me and bring gifts to me.

I could twist the truth, say the truth in another way, or turn the truth inside out and upside down till it looks favourable for me or at least reduces my punishment, will lexical ambiguity take me to hell? I wondered.

I decided to say the truth, what is the worse that can happen, "chilling with the angels" my inside voice replied. With a little action, this could be a movie worth watching I thought.

I sat with the aftermath, I started to put things back in order, and prepare for the worse, because after all my parents are still Nigerians.

I imagined how worse it could have been, and I understood something, my mother didn’t dare me, I dared myself, it all started when I dared myself, it all started with a dare.