5-min Freewrite: Don’t pick that! Satan has licked it!

If you grew up in a Nigerian household, you probably heard this warning at least once: “Don’t pick that! Satan has licked it!”

It didn’t matter if it was a biscuit, candy, or chin chin, you drop it, and boom! It becomes Satan’s property.

Looking back, I believe this was our parents’ creative way of instilling fear in us so we wouldn’t go around picking things off the floor. Because let’s be honest, children have long throat. If something looks appetizing, they don’t care if it’s on the floor, in the middle of the road, or in another person’s hand. They want it.

This rule applied mostly to open snacks, but even unopened snacks were not an exception.

Now, let me tell you about the day I learned this lesson the hard way.

One fateful afternoon, I was happily on my way home from a birthday party, eating one of the biscuits that was shared. That was when it happened. The biscuit fell.

I was instantly devastated because I already knew what my mother would say if I called her attention to the fallen biscuit. So after considering my options, I tried to sneakily pick it up.

In my mind, I was like: Satan couldn’t possibly have enough time to go around licking people’s snacks?

But before I could complete the move, my mother appeared out of nowhere and slapped it away from my palm.

”Don’t pick that! Satan has licked it!”

I froze. As always, whenever I heard that, fear had me in a chokehold. What if I picked it up and suddenly started acting possessed? What if I took a bite and grew horns?

I was too scared to find out the answers to that.

Now that I’m older, I see the wisdom behind it. Parents knew that children had no boundaries when it came to food. If we weren’t terrified of Satan’s saliva, we would have been eating every biscuit and sweet we found on the floor. They instilled hygiene by fear, and honestly? It worked.

To this day, if something falls from my hand, my first instinct is not to pick it up. Hear me out, what if satan actually has that time?😅

Images were generated using AI

This is my participation for today’s daily prompt by Freewrite Community