{"id":1836,"date":"2018-04-03T22:37:11","date_gmt":"2018-04-03T21:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itayemi.com\/blog\/?p=1836"},"modified":"2018-04-03T22:37:11","modified_gmt":"2018-04-03T21:37:11","slug":"beethoven-akinjiwonuola-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itayemi.com\/blog\/2018\/04\/03\/beethoven-akinjiwonuola-iii\/","title":{"rendered":"Beethoven Akinjiwonuola III"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beethoven Akinjiwonuola III<\/strong>
\n(April 3, 2018. 6:38am)<\/p>\n

Let me tell you about Beethoven Akinjiwonuola III (it\u2019s alright if you can\u2019t pronounce his name properly; I can\u2019t either).<\/p>\n

Yes, his mother named him after the famous composer.
\nBut unfortunately he held the violin\u2019s bow the way he held his fork.
\nAnd he couldn\u2019t tell a music note from a Greek letter.
\nHis music teachers gave up in despair and one said even the Sphinx can\u2019t solve the riddle of how it was possible to be so utterly lacking in talent.
\nIn other words Beethoven couldn\u2019t do music if his life depended on it.
\nThat of course was the source of much angst From friends and foes alike. No wonder of course, with a name like Beethoven.<\/p>\n

But there was one thing Beethoven liked doing – that was running.
\nUnfortunately his other issue had made him much too shy, so no one ever knew about his true gift.
\nBeethoven grew up more or less in obscurity.
\nYou could always find him near the curtains at parties.
\nOr pretending to be furniture.
\nOr at the refreshment table debating whether a piece of bread or a croissant is the way to go.
\nBecause he never did learn how to make small talk, all the girls with no exception found him curious but no fun at all. As one put it \u201cdisturbing and nice\u201d (but nice never a boyfriend made.)<\/p>\n

Nevertheless Beethoven knew how to run.
\nHe ran past the rectory which caused the priest to think the second coming was at hand.
\nLeading to several sermons on how the congregation ought to be ready because no one he said, can outrun the coming apocalypse.<\/p>\n

He ran past the bakery.
\nThe wind rushed through the oven
\nThe fire burnt so hot it turned all that day\u2019s bread to ashes.
\nAnd for the first time since old Mr. Peterson (the war hero) could recall, there was not a loaf of fresh bread in all the town.<\/p>\n

He ran across the river.
\nAnd all that witnessed it said the river was parted for a minute.
\nWith fishes flapping on dry ground.
\nJust like the Red Sea in Moses days.<\/p>\n

He ran past the court house.
\nAnd blew away all the papers.
\nThe clerk said there were no copies
\nThe accused was teetering at heaven\u2019s door anyway.
\nSo the judge set him free for lack of evidence.<\/p>\n

He ran through the cornfield.
\nAll the ears of corn fell off their stalks, peeled themselves, and the grains jumped off the cobs and piled up at one end of the field.
\nThe farmers woke up to the miracle of the harvest.<\/p>\n

He ran and he ran and he ran, and he ran and he ran into the past.
\nNo he didn\u2019t grow younger like Benjamin Button.
\nBut he ran so fast and so far that his grown self met his preteen self.
\nSo he told his young self what he ought to do and what he ought not to do.<\/p>\n

One would have thought that was the end of it. But no, he didn\u2019t stop running. He ran, and he ran, and he ran all the way to that first day when there was no day and no night and the earth was just a chunk of darkness spinning in the nothingness. Then he ran some more.<\/p>\n

No one truly knows what became of Beethoven Akinjiwonuola III. (It\u2019s alright if you can\u2019t pronounce his name properly; I can\u2019t either). But it seems very likely that he just ran out of time.<\/p>\n

Ayotunde Itayemi (April 3, 2018. 7:21 am)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beethoven Akinjiwonuola III (April 3, 2018. 6:38am) Let me tell you about Beethoven Akinjiwonuola III (it\u2019s alright if you can\u2019t pronounce his name properly; I can\u2019t either). Yes, his mother named him after the famous composer. But unfortunately he held … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[1184,70,1180,1183,1186,665,679,1185,1182,1181],"class_list":["post-1836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems","tag-angst","tag-apocalypse","tag-beethoven","tag-benjamin-button","tag-composer","tag-moses","tag-music","tag-obscurity","tag-red-sea","tag-sphinx"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itayemi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itayemi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itayemi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itayemi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itayemi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1836"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.itayemi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1837,"href":"https:\/\/www.itayemi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1836\/revisions\/1837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itayemi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itayemi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itayemi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}