School Memories: The Day Chuck Norris Ran Scared

You have to know that Chuck Norris rocked our world. In all the movies he acted, that man would be sent by his government to apprehend the bad guys and sometimes this meant taking up a whole army camp single-handedly. And he always finished his missions without a scratch. To our young minds, he was immortal, all-powerful and wise; a god of some sort. Unlike Chuck Norris, Timothy Rubindi wasn’t immortal, for we had never seen Timothy dodge a bullet or walk out of a burning building unscathed. If he was wise, his grades begged to differ. Thus, he earned the right to be called Chuck Norris because in our eyes he was fearless and undefeatable. Chuck Norris walked around the school with his collar up, his school shorts hanging in balance and his hair always unkempt. He completed the look with the kind of walk that we now call “bouncing”. Because he was physically strong, we all did our best to avoid confrontational situations that involved him at all costs. Besides, by the time he made his way to our school, he had already made his rounds in most of the other schools in the district. He had been expelled countless times on the account of his poor behaviour, and he left his mark on every school he attended; a teacher with a broken collarbone, a student with a broken nose...you get the picture. So the entire school community walked on eggshells around him. We made way for him in the narrow paths and could have plucked out our kidneys and handed them to him if he had asked. But when it was established that Chuck Norris had made one of the girls pregnant, he took to his heels and the school administration sent all the thirty boys of Senior Six to hunt him down. He was found in the nearby bushes and was carried back to the school. I had never made eye contact with Chuck Norris, just in case he saw me with a look of fear but confused it with the look of contempt. As he went by with his limbs tied up, I looked in his eyes for the very first time and this made me feel accomplished.