THE
UNLUCKY ONE
Boy-girl relationships
are so unpredictable…one is never sure whether it would last or not. I remember
back in high school during most Tuesday afternoons we had our G&C sessions
that would go till late in the evening, whenever the session was on boy-girl
relationships.
Madam Aduma, our single
CU teacher, being the 'expert' in relationships, will make us sit and listen to
her as she explains how boys are despicable beings that should not be trusted
as they would make us pregnant and make us forget our studies. Then immediately
she is done with the condemnation she asks, “l know you all have many questions
to ask, so who has a question?” It’s completely silent, no hand up…but
immediately she says you can write on a piece of paper, almost all heads are
bowed and all you can hear is a scribbling noise of pens on paper. l also join
the circus with a question, ‘Can a boy and girl just be friends?’
Finally, she goes around
and collects the papers ready to answer our questions. She read out loud our
questions as she answers them to the best of her knowledge. The answers she
gave were often something we expected to hear, a NO NO…but we just loved to see
the shock on her face whenever she reads out some of our questions. As we graduate High School, this Chapter of
our life comes to an end with some of us getting into relationships and even get married
while others may prefer celibacy or just become the unlucky ones.
This story is about the
unlucky ones and in particular my friend Gift. Gift often reminds me of Odili
in the ‘A man of the People’ by Chinua Achebe, always on the forefront ready to
attack or as in the sympathetic nervous system ‘fight’…when the food in the
mess is little, Cindy told him to shut up during class presentation, his
roommate mixed out and drunk his remaining Quencher juice or even when the
Lecturer gave him a 59% instead of 60%...you never know what or who would cause
him to chomp at the bit.
Maybe instead of using his name Gift let me
just acclimatize to Odili. Odili started dating this girl when we were in first
year, Yolanda ‘something’, l barely remember her since their relationship did
not last for more than a month. A month! I know it is shocking but it was all
him to blame since he was seeing another girl and Yolanda found out, then
dumped his sorry ass.
The new girl, Divinah, was
everything Odili wasn’t;a staunch Christian Union member, sat in the school
mentorship group, a peer counsellor, a respecter of person and was loved by
all. Every guy in school hated him for being the one dating the most desired
girl in school and the girls felt he didn’t deserve her. On
Sundays Divinah went to church to lead the choir in singing songs of praises
while Odili stayed in the ‘jobless corner’ with his boys, leading the
discussions on various topics from football, politics to women.
One fateful day Odili and Divinah broke up,
but everyone saw it coming as their relationship had been doomed to fail from
the beginning. Odili cried and blamed the church people for advising his
girlfriend to leave him and he got so mad and began spreading bad rumors about
our beloved Divinah. Divinah never looked back and started dating some guy in
church and those rumors were dispel off, as everyone felt she had the right and
ideal guy for her.
It didn’t take long for
Odili to go out there and start dating again. He moved to Laura ‘bendover’
known for tweaking and boos. Their dating life was characterized with;
partying, boos, smoking, humping and hangovers, always in that order. Laura started cheating on him with Baba Junior who lived just behind the school
hostels and so Odili was left yet again. Since then he was in many on- off
relationships which always reached to a point they stayed off, while others
point blank never wanted to date him. We are now in our final year and Odili
has never been in a stable relationship again but he is always still pursuing
and never giving up. He is still single and you will always find him in the
‘jobless corner’ which is just beside the gate as you enter the Jacaranda
hostels leading a discussion. Gift ‘Odili’ a name that should be a blessing to
him and mother earth but is unfortunate in love.
Comments