Being a qualified driver in Nigeria, I’ve had my fair share of swerves, screeches and near-misses, courtesy of some of the pothole-riddled roads and stupidly parked vehicles. With all this experience it goes without saying that I’m as good as any stunt driver *notices Vin Diesel shaking his head* Anyway, it’s common at the end of action movies to see a declaration by the producer stating, ‘…the stunts performed are dangerous and should not be replicated yada yada yada. Well, for the crazy Nigerian this was one bit of advice I decided to throw out of my car window. The car stunt which later ensued one fateful night after work would make me have a rethink. Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines reading!

Now for cinematic effect let’s pretend I am Vin Diesel (with my bald head I’ve automatically earned that role) and my colleague turned co-star will be Paul Walker (he’s taller anyway so it works). Of course, there was no millions of dollars we were chasing but there was something that was of mutual interest – a CD. When I walked over to Paul’s car in the car park and asked for something nice to listen to in my car he couldn’t find a particular CD at the time. By the time we both got into our race cars, drove out of the parking lot and stopped at a red light, our cars were side by side. We lowered our windows and he told he was still looking for the CD and that he would eventually throw it into my car. But before you could say ‘Michelle Rodriguez‘ the traffic light was flashing yellow. The clock was ticking!

I immediately alerted Paul and he frantically sorted through his collection and revealed the prodigal CD just as the light turned green. If only l had realized that he had found it I probably would have stalled a few seconds for him to throw the CD in. I was now zooming down the Marina asphault when I suddenly noticed that Paul was catching up and trying to align with my car window – he was going to make the jump throw! I kept looking left at his car and then back at the road because I knew that we couldn’t afford to let this package ‘hit the road’ (get it?). Like an eclipse I recall the exact point when both our cars were perfectly aligned and then Paul simultaneously threw the package into my car unto the passenger seat. But Paul didn’t notice in time that the car ahead of him had stopped abruptly.

He only had a 2-second window to get off that blocked lane and I knew he wasn’t going to make it with my car right by him. As I slammed my brakes he made a hard left, swerving into my lane and barely missing the parked car by a hair. I regained my composure as things quickly returned to normal. It was now time for me to sit back and savour this jinxed CD: and after all that drama, I inserted the CD into my deck and it didn’t play!!! What a bloody waste of adrenaline.