QUICK LESSONS

The other day - in the middle of something else we were doing, something completely unrelated to what she ended up saying - my little girl looked up at me and said, quite cheerily too, 'One boy in school today said that my dress was ugly.' That was it. And she carried on playing.

 

As you can imagine, I stopped. And took a deep breath too. It's what growing up does to you. You see a clear plastic bag and you don't think space helmet, you think suffocation. You see the railings of a staircase and you don't think – Oh, shiny new slide – you think broken bones and hideous head wounds. You see an empty parking lot and (Heaven help us all) you think muggings, rape and child abductions, not make-shift football field or new kingdom to explore.

 

So, I thought to myself, what was so ugly about a dress everyone else was wearing; or didn't she wear her uniform to school that day? This is how it starts, isn't it? (Paranoid thoughts refusing to be calmed down.) Soon, it would be – your teeth are crooked, you have pimples, your breasts are too small, your legs are too hairy, where were you when God was sharing hips? In fact, I think you're too fat.

 

And, before you know it, she's skipping breakfast, throwing up lunch, stuffing gelatinous bags through surgical incisions on the underside of her perfect breasts, dating the ones 'they' say are 'cool', having the eighth child in a desperate search for her husband's heir. Is this how it starts?

 

I took another deep breath. Don't be silly, Dike. You KNOW how it is. Sometimes, when a small boy likes a small girl he says to her – I think you're very ugly. (Because, sometimes, when a father is proud of his son, he hisses and says – Coconut head!) But, to be totally honest with you, I've become a lot less rational since she was born.

 

So, the other day, someone said to me, 'Dike, abeg, can you teach my daughter a few moves? I think she's being bullied in school'. My brother, paranoia or not, here is a fact - you cannot legislate away playground oppression. And there are many people - on both sides of the bully/bullied divide - who will not out-grow this thing as a matter-of-course.

 

So, I stood her in front of me, barely eleven years old, and said – 'Listen, if someone rushes at you in school to push you like this…' And I shoved her gently, so she understood EXACTLY what I meant.  'I want you to move your hands like this…' She giggled. Like this? Asked it shyly. 'Yes.' I nodded 'Just like that.' And we kept at it, till she was laughing out loud, parrying my hands, and throwing me to the floor.

 

Because, even though they both provoke similar behavioural patterns, there is a world of difference between Fear and Love. And it's one thing to do something because you care how someone feels, and quite another to do it because you care what they think. So, I stopped (it is the Divine right of parents, after all, to over-react) and told my little girl what to say.

 

But you can never really tell with children. That's why you make them repeat sentences. It annoyed her a little, seeing as she was in the middle of something she ACTUALLY cared about - combing out the tangled hair of her doll. But I threatened a smack, so she giggled and said, 'I like my dress.' Looked me straight in the eye,  'And what is your own business sef?' That was it. And we carried on playing. 

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A TALE OF BROKEN HEARTS

When I was in Primary school, it wasn't 'cool' to admit you 'liked' a girl. So, you can imagine how I felt when my sister tricked me into a confession. She had asked me who I 'liked' in my class and I had, of course, emphatically denied that such a thing was even possible. How can?

 

So, she said – If I tell you who I 'like' in my class, will you tell me who you 'like' in your class? Hmm. Well, if it was going to be like that – Okay. And she said – I like so-and-so. Wow. I couldn't even believe she said that! Fine then, I twisted my lips (a deal was a deal) and went on to say it for the first time in this life - I like so-and-so.

 

Well, as this article is not really about how devious the female specie of the human race can be, I'm not going to tell you how my sister cackled long into the night. Of course, her own 'so-and-so' was completely fictitious. I tried to bluff my way out, claiming my own 'so-and-so' was also a lie, but like Kenny Rogers so eloquently sang - love (or in this case a baby crush) is 'something everybody else can see'.

 

It just shows. And, because it SHOWS, you can't pretend it doesn't hurt (well you could try to) when you get NAILED; like if she (Lord, have mercy) refuses to sit with you in class. What did you ever do to deserve this pain shooting up and down your chest? But you MUST recover before break time, before the other boys find out and slap you with that odious label - 'woman wrapper'. God forbid.

 

Then, one day, it becomes something you're proud of – with your pimples and developing pectoral muscles. So, you're even less believable when you try to pretend that she no longer returning your calls is 'nothing'. My brother, if you've ever laid down on a single mattress in a dark room, or sat on some wooden bench outside your house, listening to, or softly singing under your breath, Boyz II Men's 'End of the Road', over and over again, then you KNOW that a broken heart is anything BUT 'nothing'.

 

It hurts like hell. I can't even describe it. Okay, let me try. When you're in primary school, it's like falling off your bike and skidding a few meters along the road on your knees. When you're in secondary school, it's like when a senior bends you forward and slaps you in the middle of your back, in THAT place you can't quite reach with your itching fingers, no matter how deeply you arc. When you're in University, it's like failing a course in your final year, or accidentally rubbing your eyes just after cutting tatashe, or being stung in the crotch by a severely pissed off soldier ant, still stubbornly embedded somewhere down there. You know what? I can't describe it.

 

But it's what you risk every time you admit that you love someone. In the real world, things can get really ugly; sometimes, people walk away, I swear to you, the exact second you need them the most. But it's a bit like saying you won't take another breath, just because when you pulled in the previous one you sucked in a fly and almost choked to death.  No. You cough it up and breathe again. Because, I tell you this, through all the things that happen between when the sun goes down and when it comes up again, I have reached this conclusion - it's better to have seen a dream die than never to have dreamed at all.

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GUYS ALOUD

Don't worry. I'm not about to do a 'Femi Fani-Kayode'. But I remember the first time I heard the word, 'conji'. I was freshly arrived at University - sitting out in the evening, with a friend, on the wall separating our hostel block from the next. He kept fidgeting. After a while, he said it was 'conji' that was 'worrying him'. It sounded like an ailment. So, wary of contagion, I shifted away slightly and said 'sorry'. It took a few seconds - because he carried on speaking – before I realized what he was on about.

 

'It's been three months', he said, looking genuinely distressed. 'Honestly, as I am sitting here, I can't concentrate.' Then he looked at me and said, 'How do you do it?' Not a problem at the time, seeing as I was barely 17, and hadn't actually done anything yet. And I wasn't alone either; take this other friend - let's just call him Lukman - who returned to his room once and found it mysteriously locked from inside. And when he went round the window to look, my brother, what he saw made him gasp out: 'My God! They're doing it!' I haven't stopped teasing him about it. And about the fact that they didn't stop, even after he'd shut his eyes and asked the Lord to arrest every offending cell in their bodies.

 

That's how difficult it is, apparently, to hold it in once you've let it out. You start calibrating Time around the instances of its occurrence (hence, the invention of a term like, 'conji'). I tried, once, to dissuade a roommate. No. It wasn't out of concern for his lecherous soul. I was just tired and about to go to bed. Then I heard whisperings at the door. 'Where you dey go? Dike dey inside o. He's sleeping.' A long thoughtful silence. Then the reply: 'Okay. No problem now, we go dey quiet. I no go disturb am.' WHAT? I sat up in bed. This guy was not serious. Quickly – it was the only dissuasion strategy that came to me in the seconds it took him to turn the door handle – I dragged my desk over, grabbed the biggest Bible available, opened to the middle, and bent my head over it. For where? He entered the room with the girl in tow, didn't even say a word to me, pulled a mattress to one corner and disappeared beneath the blanket.

 

It made me think, 'Jehovah, what will I not see in this world?' Yes. But then I also chalked it down to youthful exuberance, and all the heady feelings that come with encountering FREEDOM for the first time in one's life. Surely, it is something people out-grow? Well, not exactly. You outgrow puberty. You out-grow curiosity – one way or the other, whether by listening to people, walking into situations, reading books, watching stuff, wandering down a few (or maybe not so few) paths yourself.  These things WILL happen. What you don't out-grow are consequences. And! THE dilemma. Yes. THE dilemma. Forget those drawings in Biology; not every part of you is actually linked to your thinking brain. And, once you turn this thing on, sooner or later, it will want someone your heart, or your soul, or your spirit, or just plain common sense, doesn't. That, my friend, is THE dilemma.

 

So – for the sake of giving him one – let's call my friend, Bobby. 'Okay, Bobby, I'm ready for that question now, ask me again.' And Bobby scratches the back of his head, shifts around a bit, looks at me and says, 'Men! I haven't had sex in three months. How do you deal with it?' Well, Bobby, it HAS been seventeen years (God forbid! I meant since that conversation). But the thing is, unlike a conscience, erections don't actually always point you straight. They don't care if you're in school, or still trying to find your feet in life. They don't care if, midway through kissing this person you met an hour ago, you reach into your back pocket and can't find the condom you put there. They don't care if you have enough children already, either with the person they are leering at now or with someone else, someone waiting at home, watching the clock and worrying. They DON'T care. Even if you're breaking hearts and risking reputation, they DON'T care…

 

What can I say? It's just the way we're wired. Learn it early – no secret formulas – how to take deep breaths and cold showers. Because, compared to what you will find down some of these roads, the miserable state of 'conji' is pure heaven.

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