We were young and like most children our age we were also stupid and carefree, we had no care for the consequences of some of the things we did just like almost everyone passing through life at that age must not have cared too.
It started at that age in our lives when we began to take real notice of things around us, one of the things we first saw was the smoking of cigarettes and marijuana (weed) and the drinking of alcohol. It was curiosity that first pushed us into smoking and drinking. Shehu, Abdul and I started by picking up half smoked cigarettes thrown by rich smokers (at that time we thought only the rich could afford to do this), on our unlucky days when the rich smoked their whole cigarettes we had to make do with the butts of fully smoked cigarettes from which we could only manage to salvage a drag or two. With time the left over cigarettes of others became unsatisfactory and so we decided to step our game up.

After days of deliberating on who amongst the three of us would be saddled with the big and heavy task of buying our own cigarette, Shehu and Abdul eventually decided by a vote of two to one that I would bear the cross for us.

"You look older than us he will most likely sell to you than us", Abdul told me as if I didn't know that the two of them conspired to choose me.

But it was true that I did look older than them even though they were both older than me. Our fear then was that Mallam Abbah who sold cigarettes in the neighborhood would not sell the cigarette to us because of our age Shehu and Abdul were both eleven while I was just ten then. We had seen the warning on empty cigarette packs that it should not be sold to persons under eighteen years old.

Mallam Abbah's shop was just a makeshift shop standing in front of the house where he worked as a watchman. The generous house owner allowed him to operate the shop in front of his house so he could find another source of income to augment the monthly salary he paid him to maintain his three wives and ten children. I could never really understand why Mallam Abbah refused to take a cue from his richer and younger employee who despite his wealth had only one wife and two kids.

And so one fateful evening I picked up the cross for the three of us and with fear coursing through every part of my being I walked up to Mallam Abbah's shop.

"Give me three sticks of Benson and Hedges", I fearfully told him, handing him the money and looking nervously around me for any familiar face but I saw none.

Without a word he collected the money and handed me the object of my purchase. It was only then that I realised that all our fear was unfounded. Mallam Abbah had no problem selling cigarettes to under age children. In fact, even if a newborn baby came to his shop to buy cigarettes he would not hesitate from selling it to him as long as he had the money; that was all he cared for. As I walked back to the street corner where Abdul and Shehu were waiting for me I gave them a thumbs up and watched as the look of fear and apprehension written all over their faces fled, to be replaced by one of joy. Walking as fast as we could with our treasure safely hidden in our pockets we rushed to one of the unoccupied and uncompleted buildings in the area to enjoy our cigarettes. With the realisation of how easy it was to get cigarettes, buying alcohol came easy, although it was not easy buying weed sometimes especially when the drug enforcement agents were up and doing.

For a long time we hid our new indulgence from our parents until one night when Shehu mistakenly and unintentionally allowed his father catch him smoking. Amongst us he smoked the most and one day when he could not find sleep despite all his search for it he decided to pass the night smoking. If sleep was not ready to keep him company, he could call on the weed that was always ready to heed to his call. When he was sure that everyone in the house was asleep, he picked up the courage to light his weed up he was still lost in his weed world when his father, woken either by the smell of the weed or something else, caught him. It was easy for his parents to get a confession out of him about his smoking and drinking and who he was doing it with, and before we knew it a meeting with the three of us and our parents was arranged but despite their advice, warning and even threats we refused to give up. We felt we knew what was best for us.

"They are still living in the stone age – they don't know that in this modern age everything goes", we told ourselves, refusing to allow their words entry into our deaf ears and closed minds.

Our parents were not the ones that eventually made us stop, in fact the more they tried to make us stop the more we rebelled and refused to give up.

The smoking and drinking was our own way of telling our parents and the world that we were not satisfied with everything we saw around us the corruption, the mismangement of public fund, the leaders who behaved and acted like they did not really care about our future. This was our own way of telling them that we were rebels determined to lives our lives as we saw fit and not as they saw fit the more they tried to make us stop the more we became bolder.

No, we did not stop because of our parents. It was Abdul's madness that eventually laid to rest out rebellion. It started imperceptibly. He began to withdraw himself from us, and when we began to get worried we tried to find out what was wrong but he refused to tell us.

He spend his days alone smoking and drinking in increasing amount, the smallest thing made him become angry and violent and then I think somewhere in his head he also started withdrawing from himself until one morning we woke up and he was gone, replaced by someone in torn tattered clothes and unkempt hair walking, talking, laughing and crying with some new invisible friends only he could see.