There was a day in every Nigerian school year when academic failure was temporarily forgiven: Inter-House Sports Day. You were assigned a house from day one. Red House. Blue House. Green House. Yellow House. The color defined your identity for the next six years. You wore a house jersey that was two sizes too big or two sizes too small. You chanted house slogans that made no grammatical sense. You hated students from other houses with a passion that would confuse your adult self. The trauma was varied. The 100-meter dash where you came fifth out of five. The high jump where you knocked the bar off with your knee. The sack race where you fell face-first into the sand. The egg-and-spoon race where your egg fell in the first three seconds and you were disqualified in front of the entire school. And the parents! The ones who attended and screamed your name like you were in the Olympics. The ones who compared you to your sibling who won three medals in 2009. The ones who brought coolers of rice and malt for the athletes while you, the non-athlete, watched from the stands hungry. But the glory! If you won a race, you were a god for one week. The house captain shook your hand. The principal mentioned your name at assembly. You wore your medal to class until the teacher made you take it off. It was the closest most of us got to professional athletics. Which house were you in, and what's your most embarrassing or triumphant inter-house sports memory?
