A Promise I Had Ever Kept

When I was in secondary school, my class teacher happened to be my mathematics teacher. I was so stubborn and was not ready to do most of the teacher's assignments. They had known me as an assignment defaulter. Just because of that, I had taken a lot of walloping. And most times, I skipped school pretending to be sick to my parents. I was not the type who loved school, but somehow was following the footsteps of some bad students in our midst.

One fateful day, we saw the darkness in the daytime. We were so shocked to see our principal in our class, as it is not in his nature to visit our class. Although anytime he comes to our class means he wants to either deal with us for our wrongdoing or make us work in the school compound. The class was silent immediately he entered. He stood at the front of the class, and we all greeted. he told us that our maths teacher was absent. He said it was due to some illness. He also proceeded by saying he would be going to the hospital for treatment and would not be in school for about three days. The whole class murmured, showing a sign of happiness within them.

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He concluded by saying that our maths teacher had dropped some assignments with him and had instructed him to hand over the assignments to me. I looked at him in surprise. I was nowhere to be found in his list of trusted students. How come he directed his instructions to me? This was the question I kept asking myself. He said further that “your class and maths teacher said Abigail should make it a promise to him that she would convince the class to do the assignments”. For some moments, I was quiet. He was waiting for my response for over two minutes. I decided to break the silence and speak my mind. I told him to tell my class teacher that I would try my best. He smiled, dropped the assignments with me, and left immediately.

After a few hours, I began to observe the nature of my mates in the class. They remained the same arrogant beings, even including me. I was not ready to give the assignment to them, and they were not ready to ask about the assignment from me. "At least my class teacher and maths teacher will only wallop me, and that will be all", this was what my mind was telling me. Whether it was a bad mind or a good one, I don't know.

The next day, I sat lonely, trying to think of promises people had failed and what it had led them to. I also thought of what had happened to me with my mum and why my mum did not trust me that much. After critical thinking, I woke up from being carried by the heart of disobedience for obedient. I concluded that, at least, my maths teacher would have to trust me if I did the great job he had entrusted to me. Also, there are so many people he would have trusted, but he overlooked them and chose me. This alone showed me a deep sense of concern.

The next morning, I was the first to get to school. I wrote the questions on the board before the arrival of others. When they arrived, one of them said, "Who wrote this on the board?" I wasn't scared because I'm also part of their gang. I opened up, and they all laughed. To them, it was something they could not do, but to me, it is something they can all do without a doubt.

I took the first question and solved it on the board. A few of them followed me and copied the question as well as the solution in their notebook.

As I wanted to solve the next question, one of them stood up and took the marker from me. He started solving the question. Although at first I was shocked, I later saw that the majority of them were serious. He solved the question without a doubt. We all copied the solution again into our notes. For some reason that I don't seem to understand, the whole class concentrated. They were so serious, and we did more than what our maths teacher had given us.

I was not expecting him to come back anytime soon just because of the condition of his health, but to my surprise, he showed up after three days of absence. This was the following Monday. We were given the questions on Wednesday, and he was back on Monday.

He asked everyone to submit their notes as usual. Although he was thinking we did not do the assignment he had given to us, he was gazing at me as if I did not do the work he had given to me. After checking our assignments, he called me out and praised my trust. He said, "Thank you for fulfilling my promises". And since that day, the whole class, who had been stubborn, became calm in their class. He hugged me, and there was nothing he would do without raining praises on me.