Doctor Freaks Journal - Using Proper Cutlery For The First Time...

This is a must read!.... LOL

It may interest a "non-initiate" to know that mandatory attendance of three (3) Law School Dinners constitutes an integral part of the training of a legal practitioner.

The training of a legal practitioner is a "total package". The Council of Legal Education in its finite wisdom has put several programmes together to ensure that every legal practitioner who is baked by the Nigerian Law School is 100 per cent "done".


The mandatory dinners seek to expose a trainee legal practitioner to the rudiments of socialization. There is no gainsaying the fact that in the corporate world, businesses get talked over lunch.


Few weeks into our First Term (as the one-year-programme is broken into three (3) terms) the Law School authority announced that our Dinner would be coming up shortly and we were all advised to prepare. Mind you, it was/is mandatory. The "bad news" for some followed -proper use of cutlery was mandatory and same was to be monitored and assessed!

 Quite a number of us hadn't had cause to use sets of cutlery before that event.


Despite the fact that I (the writer) attended a top rated secondary school (at least it was one of the best at the time) and that I was in the boarding house for a number of years. Out of the years I spent there, I cannot vividly remember any day that I was taught how to handle any of my cutlery.


At home? In my house, I only used spoon! Forks were "for decoration" or when we ran out of spoons. In any event, by a stroke of fate, I had attended some dinners earlier and I had enjoyed some degree of exposure prior to that time, so I was a bit confident. Google was not this close at the time anyways.


Few days before the long awaited Law Dinner, "Finishing Schools" sprang up in several corners of the hostel and lecture theatre. The smart ones who were humble enough to learn "enrolled" and put the "devil to shame". That was before the emergence of Naira Marley, I would have said that they "t'Esu m'ole(d)". The indifferent ones and the "arrogant" ones carried on as if it mattered not. The day of reckoning waited patiently for them.


Then came the D-Day! It was dinner time! 

The venue was one of the halls located just before the lecture theatre (in Lagos Campus). We filed in before the Benchers and other dignitaries. I think ours had a Justice of the Court of Appeal and a Judge of the Lagos State High Court and the ageless Mama HB in attendance. It was the day most of us had looked forward to. Beyond the mouth-watering food with the drink that was about to be served, for me it was the first time I was having that sense of belonging and when my presence at the Nigerian Law School began to make real sense to me.


The ceremony was short. Pep talks flowed from the seniors and Benchers and dinner was served. There is an adage in Yoruba that says "ní ojó ikú erin oríšíríşí obę ló máá ń y'ojú" literally translated thus: "...at the final resting place of a slain elephant, expect the gathering of an array of knives" (we need not go beyond the lexical level of translation for the purpose of this piece). We all appeared in our various "coats", "suits" (two-piece, three-piece, etc) and tuxedos, and we were ready for the dinner, "our dinner". Immediately dinner was set, everybody attempted to display one skill or the other or the lack of it.

 I can remember the case of a very good friend who ordinarily was a very bold and outspoken person (I won't mention his name) who was for the first time humbled. He suddenly went soft in the face of dinner. Lol. He kept mute throughout and refused to consume his dinner till this moment (thank God, he travels all over the world today). Some struggled until their pieces of chicken developed imaginary wings and flew out of their plates. 

Some found their chickens on the floor and were too shy to pick same up. It was more fierce than the battle of Waterloo! Mech shared the story of her own dinner in Abuja Campus with me, about how a friend of hers suddenly became a "vegetarian" that night!

Towards the end, some colleagues who had earlier come with polythene bags to the hall wrapped theirs up and tucked same in their pockets like village primary school boys (this is a story for another day) and that was how they succeeded in smuggling same out. It was a hilarious experience! Some of us still laughed at ourselves till this moment. Ol' Boy, how did you survive that dinner ("onslaught")? But we all did, one way or the other. I seriously doubt whether we most of us knew the essence of the training then. Maybe, and just maybe it could have been more fun if the full essence had been clearly spelt out at the time.


Today, most of us have had cause to have lunch at various levels and functions; and unknown to us, the confidence with which we approached same may have come from those three (3) mandatory dinners.


This may sound so elementary, but hey! It is not. As parents, we owe our children the duty of teaching them how to use the cutlery and simple dining etiquette, lest they end up as "their parents". Kindly include this lesson in your "To Do List". Trust me, it would come handy someday.


Stay safe. Coronavirus is real.