Prequel: It's About Time

Time of writing. 8.17 am. The crunchy sounds you might hear – Me, having flakes o’corn!

Today I AROSE. And it just feels right saying it that way. Because I actually did. Early. It feels surreal – is that it? Where’s a dictionary when you don’t need one? The air. Freshhh. It was almost like I was in Triangle in a Squared Circle Yoga Type Mode. Perfect! Chalk one up for me. Like I’d been doing this everyday and it just came naturally. . . until of course, several days and sleepless nights which in future would become my, er, my Mr Hyde (if that’s the evil one).

But for now, this 7am thing didn’t look so heavy-handed. Especially considering I’d tossed and turned and . . . finally lolled off to sleep - you surely were not expecting me to follow up with ‘blew the house down’, coz if you were, that’s (awwww!) all cute and poetic but your nose belongs in another story, sorry - at some ungodly hour that was unworthy of my prized early rising. Hence the word, AROSE.

So, feeling all spiked up and Bhuddish with myself, I plunked me into the bathroom (ah, ah, ah, no more Shower Hour tales, I have learned the hard way). It could always be this way, all I had to do was chant the 7am mantra (I could tweet (sigh! Rolling the eyes!) Madonna, – don’t get it tweeted, Pete, it’s still the worst thing since Big Brother - she must still have her Bhudda notes somewhere, or at the very least I’d search the length and breath of google). OMG! I just realized I’ve been mis-spelling 'Bhudda'. My apologies, Great One. So you could just mentally replace ‘dd’ with ‘h’. I practically have to expel the ‘ha’ to remember to write it right (there’s an English word for what I just did) so it’s OK if you don’t get it the first two tries. Like me.

Anyways, as I was saying, I could get used to this! Or maybe it’s just all in the spirit of Day One On The Job.

So dressed in high spirits, black pumps, dark blue jeans, a yellow (yes, yellow; bright, for that matter. I’m in my It’s-Time-To-Step(but this is more of Jump for me)–Out-Of-My-Comfort-Zone-And-Take-The-Plunge phase)shirt, waist coat (I’m cringing, don’t know if that’s the word oh, but the last time I referred to it as ’monkey jack(et)’, Ndomo reported me to 1993 and let’s just summarize it as an experience-in-order-to-believe, er, experience. The extent of the tantrum a dead-and-buried (at least that’s what I thought until It exploded) decade-and-a-half year-old could throw! And on top of that It threatened to sue for Exhumation and Disruption Of The Peace Of The Dead and Buried! Still cringing!) and a blue neckpiece by Treasure (Eyza owes me for free publicity but she won’t read this so IK . . . you know what, forget it), in no particular order(sigh! Still talking about my outfit. You needn’t always get carried away by my sub-thoughtlings, like now), I did the rounds.

Meet-and-great. And of course in the spirit of the World Cup, I hailed the Germans. Don’t take it too P. This wasn’t ass-kissing rehearsal. I had just become souled out to RedBlackYellow&White (with such amazing colors, it’s astonishing how Hitler could still be racist, or maybe it wasn’t that then. I hate history). I’d become souled out to you too if you thrashed the Queen out England (pardon my Portuguese) and sewed Maradona’s pants onto his ( I presume hairy) butt – or butt onto his pants, order is of no importance! Seeing a 5-footer run around loose, nude and butt-naked (in this case, I can’t get them to mean the very same thing in my head), long dark hair flailing in the wind (amongst several other unmentionables) has never been on - and will never make it alive to (take pun as you may) - My Bucket List! SHUDDER!!! Forget grammar, “NYAMA!”

Where was I? Oh yes, the part where I was going to adopt ‘Guten Morgen’ as my ‘good morning’ and ‘Hail Hitler’ as my ‘how far?’ On second thoughts, that would be major ass-kissing. So, ‘nehi nehi’ (RTE again, that’s Indian, did you miss the no-German-ass-kissing line? Must I confess that I don't know ‘NO’ in German?).

So, I’m writing this and pretending I don’t know how to edit anything that comes out of my head through my fingers and onto my screen, which let’s face it, I don’t, while I await The Most Bearded Man I’ve Ever Seen In Real Life (I said real life so Osama doesn’t count, know-all!). Besides he’d slump Osama for creativity: red, brown and blond beard hairs(truly German) vs plain, boring, black. I am BORED. I know!

Clack-Clack-Clack-Clack! Ow! After four tries. My teeth hurt . . . My jaws hurt. . . Don't look at me like that. I just thought I'd give it a try. It seemed to work for Donkey all the way to Far, Far Away, at least until Shrek gave him The Look. So I guess it didn't work. So . . . . (a lot of that lately. Boredom has really hit. I can feel the twitch, I’m starting to itch) Punishment: I’ll just settle for an earful of my neighbour’s radio (which would become our little source of Coffee Break Comedy – you wouldn’t believe the unadulterated opinions of Nigerians about our shoddy leaders, politics and everything in between). Sin: Since I’m the only one on the planet who wants nothing to do with Steve Jobs.

And this is only 7.47am. I drum my fingers on my desk. Hum wordlessly. Any sign of life, number of legs regardless (I'm not in a position to be judgemental and picky), against the pristine white would make BFF right about now. No Paris-Hilton-like interviews necessary. This is when I should be rounding off Jennifer Galiardo’s dance routine and heading upstairs for a shower. In my former life. Or frowning and turning my back on the Sun. In the life before that. But NO, there are more interesting things happening before me. Name one? Can you count the number of black dots on a blank screen? You may call me Edima Bored (Middle Name: IS).

AH-HAH! Light bulb! Facebook! Nah (with drooping shoulders), FB no longer serves as the antidote to boredom. NEPA has taken their light. Man, I miss my x-office! 24 hours light-speed internet. I used to check my emails before they even arrived, I was way ahead in my Sorority Life, I could shoe-shop endlessly or just add the newest Vince Camuto’s to my wishlisht (deep, threatrical, longing sigh). I used to discover a new site every single day, I could host that BBC tech-internet-show thingy. And then there was Limwire. Oh, for the days when I used to put Silverbird out of business, with an empty Search Box (synonym for Internet ‘blank cheque’) and ‘ENTER’, at least in my jurisdiction. Listen to me, moaning and whining. Just like a girl on a first date with a hot, new guy, whining about my X. Talk about breaking all the rules. Dr Phil would have a Phit! My chest aches. Not the usual dull pain-when-i-move-at-certain-angles-since-last-week hurt. More like a constant bang-bang, like my heart thumping against my ribcage. Like Jerry’s puny heart pounding when he’s been drowned in soy sauce, buried between 2 slices of white bread and (this close) to Tom’s mouth! And all this chest drama when I’m not in love. Sigh!

Bored. Waiting. Bored. Waiting. Bored.

But it just occurred to me that I had come prepared like a good scouts girl, girl scout, whatever. Prepared to write about my first day at work. I just didn’t expect to fill 4 pages of fool’s cap sheets with big ugly writing by 8.23!!! Perhaps I should pray, thank God for my day – and oh shit( I did not just say that loud) I forgot – or nearly forgot my brother’s birthday. I’ve never been so excited about making a phone call to remind the rest of the family to remember a certain fat boy born this day, years ago.

Yaaay, lunch time! The most horrible sound ever to come out of anything's mouth would come to be the symbol for, "It is 13 hundred hours, go feed your aching bellies, on the double. Quick march." Did I say my day was boring? Well, I went lunching with a certain colleague whose name I deign to mention until - well, let’s just say pause for extra drama! For starters (no pun, I promise), lunch was . . . think of the biggest, bestest birthday present you ever imagined, wrapped up in this HUGE box and handed to you, and you were so sure it was exactly the one thing you’d always dreamed you'd have on your next birthday, and you spent hours unwrapping the box in anticipation only to find NOTHING. Or, you actually found something and then discovered right in the very middle of your excitement pre-hugging-the-gift-tight-post-opening-your-mouth-in-joyous-exclamation that it was just a dream (and you have your you-truly-know-how-to-kill-a-person’s-dream alarm clock, to thank for that). Take that, and it’s not even close to beginning to describe my disappointment. But in the spirit of God-knows-what, I put up a brave front, smiled and waved - and settled in for the disaster of the start to my working career!

Talk about the Official JJC of the Year. Red Carpet Welcome? In your face! Left-over toothpick, spines of a poor fish that had been sawed in half, thoroughly dissected and left on the floor for me to almost step on, and odds and ends of someone’s obviously smaller-than-the-spoon mouth! Gross! I crossed my arms as I suffered through my new colleagues' lunch break. Not in defiance, I promise. There was just nowhere dirty enough for me to rest my definitely bio-degradable arms. Of course, I didn’t have any lunch unless a plastic bottle of Teem adjectified as 'sweaty' qualifies. Which it does. Bottled. Cocked. Green. My sentence in Benue had not been for nothing, after all. By the time I made the hot trek back to the office, I was saying things, feeling things and thinking things that would make the Webster’s dictionary look realllllly tiny.

I let the A/C fan away my flames of upset as I observed from my seat the way my co-workers challenged one another over a game of Solitaire (the very intellectual piece of property that leeches itself onto every Microsoft OS as a personal thank-you gift from The Bill Himself). And shook my head. 1.30pm. 5.30 was such a world away. I searched for a tiny bit of space on my sheet and began the draw-and-chant song: small circle, small circle, biiiig circle (the head and eyes), greet mummy, greet daddy, saaaay hello (nose, then mouth) . . . etc. The song that ends up with a teddy bear made up of circles and sixes, and a tail, remember?!

In summary, I went to work smelling Unforgiveably of Sean John and drunk with High Spirits, and came home sober and reeking edibly of 'If you Like Woody by Kors, You’ll Like Firewood By Cafeteria' . . .

Time of completed writing: Some Ungodly Hour. The perambulating you might hear – Me, “blowing the house down” to make it to work. Any time.

My name is Onu’a and I love my job!

Time For The Crime

I jumped off my toilet seat. Oh shit! Oh shit! I had fallen asleep doing a 2nd round of “NO 2”. I shut my eyes tight as I pulled back my semi-transparent pink window strip. And opened them to see the dreaded bright glow of the sun signifying daylight! Full daylight. 6.30-ish! Oh, even bigger shit! I dashed across the bed and grabbed my Samsung dual. SIX THIRTY-SIX! SHIT with capital block letters! Late, late, late. Who says a girl can’t do a bath and a brush in 4 mins? I could feel the grim determination deep within my chest. 6.45 tops I’d be outta here!

Brushing off water with my mini towel (I hate small towels, they take time which I didn’t have and they got wet before you got dry which meant a double rub-off which meant extra time which I didn’t have enough of right then. Mother Darling had thrown away my previous bigger one, “these things cost N500 ONLY, you know”). I stared at myself in the mirror. Phew! My nicely tonged hair had gone all spiky on me. All I needed was gel at the sides and my Mohawk was ready for the cameras. Who said short hair wasn’t easy? Who said short hair wasn’t cheap? Name of Stylist: Too much Sleep. (note to self: apart from the fact that easy+cheap+sleep = Something Else, what’s wrong with my last three sentences?)

I picked up my Samsung dual again. 6.48! I screamed. Painfully. In full time agony! I hadn’t even worn my bra. What to wear? What to wear? Oh big shit! I hate time! I hate clocks! And above all I hate my job for waking me up at this ungodly hour (which on any normal day is the ungodly 5.15 am – 5.00 too early, 5.30 too late. Because exercise took 30mins and for some reason that betrays a hidden love for the F-word, I could never just be done with the clean-up-and-dress-up process in 15mins. Real bitch, considering I wasn’t holding any celebrity status or any other status quo that demanded such pause for cause-and-effect routines. Not yet anyways.)
Something red and something blue. A red dress top shirt thing and blue jeans. My new (finally!) ankle gladiatiors (cost a fortune, were a lil’ too tight but damn! they looked good. Plus, they were a much needed replacement for my white Aldos which were fast becoming a tattoo on my feet). Picked up my bag, stuffed my phones, my bible (gotta have God on the job) and out the door.

Double oh shit! Laptop bag! I doubled back up the stairs 5 at a time (which didn’t work coz I had to pause and pant and that didn’t help. Time. Next time two a time.) Time! I unplugged my laptop and shoved everything – lappy, USB, charger, earplugs( it was death for a day without them), charger again, USB again, extra earplugs (just in case) – in the bag and of course, couldn’t zip the bag. And therefore had to use both hands to hold the unzipped laptop bag which meant sigh! I dropped the bag – the laptop bag – hoisted my handbag across my left shoulder( for some reason, I’ve never been able to successfully hang a bag on my right side), wrapped my Pashmina around my shoulders ( my office officially boasted an A/C that emitted drafts akin to the frosts of St. Petersburg.), and grabbed my lappy bag with both hands(that took an extra 3mins and by mental calculation and the fact that I couldn’t hear Adot snore as loudly as before, it was 6.57). But there was no way I was leaving my laptop behind.( Not even for one silent look of “late again” with steamy eyes that peered at me as I walked past one or two of them ‘rette-puffing Nazis that would reply my cheerful I’m-late-what’s-the-worst-that -could-happen “morning” with an even more cheerful late-as-usual “morning”. After all I’d still pay the dreaded price of bumping into them and suffer from forced How Long Can You Hold Your Breath practice sessions. Tho’ you wouldn’t catch me complaining out loud. I could now do 40 full seconds and strut past in 4-inch heels with head held high and still speak all at the same time. Who said smoking was bad for “fill in the blank space”?

I plunked into the back seat after my “plenty kaya”, breathed in deeply and gasped at the car clock that was NEVER wrong. Even if it was, the voice of that Annoying News Reader stopped my “Please, please don’t let it be 7 yet!” prayer. SEVEN OH TWO! And choked almost immediately. I needn’t worry about Death at the Exhalation of the Nazis For The Crime of Extreme Lateness To Work. Suleiman’s B.O. (translation? Seriously?) would get me first.

Can I say shit one last time?

Nigeria - Five & Nought

If I were 50 years old, still living with my parents, unmarried and no kids, job-hopping, bed-hopping and unable to pay at least for my B&B, I’d check myself into a mental facility. Voluntarily - and request the new brain disease to be named after me, and asked not be checked-out until the end of life, because apparently there would be no cure for me.

If I were 50 years old and as at this point, MJ(rest his soul) had nothing on me by way of skin colourations and the trauma of leaving a 4-year old with a colouring book full of beautiful penciled drawings and nothing but black and white crayons, I’d check myself into an Inferiority Complex Anonymous Rehab Centre.

If I were 50 years old and on my birthday, my family members tried to kill me by blowing up my mortgaged car, it’d finally dawn on me that there was something truly and terribly wrong with me and that nobody really wanted me around or cared about me – in fact they hated my guts – and I’d do everything humanly possible to make amends by checking myself into the church and bleeding my eyes out in prayer.

I am half of 50 and am not yet a woman. I’d bag a Ph.D in post-teenage issues, snag an award for holding on to the last shreds of tomboyish behaviour and win the Doctors’ Guild Research Award for Best Guinea Pig for the Studies In Transformation to Womanhood.

I am half of 50, and I work a 7-5 job, that can’t pay me half a year’s worth of rent at a go, can’t feed me for half a month and can’t let me go shopping in Mango’s, House of Farrah or even Swatch. Unless of course my shopping is adjectized by “window”.

When I am 50, I will sit my kids at Christmas and in one of those moments when we’ve just had a good laugh and there really is nothing to fill the space, I’ll recall the good ol’ days and recount them to my kids thus: did you know that once upon a time in Nigeria, there was such a thing called NEPA(what you call PHCN) and we never had regular light? And they’d exclaim with eyeballs about to pop, NOOO WAY!

When I am 50, I’d be retired by choice and concentrate fully on my job as Honourable Mrs Somebody, celebrating my second term in office, with an after-work party. I would shut my eyes as I blew out 50 candles and instead of making a wish, I’d offer a silent prayer of thanks to God for the fairness of the election that brought me into this office.

When I am 50, my first child would be ready for college, I wouldn’t have to worry about knowing someone that knows someone that knows someone. His JAMB score would have, by default, (of course, he inherited my IQ and then some) qualified him for on-the-spot admission, and I wouldn’t have to worry about brown-enveloping the VC, his P.A. and his P.A.’s messenger for that to happen. His educational fund, it would then occur to me, about 60% of it, would have to be put to better use. I would only have to worry about just which of the universities to send him to. You might not consider it a tough job, but when there’s a World’s Top 100 Universities List in front of you, and at least 25 of the 40 spots belonging to Nigeria are staring you in the face, each struggling to outshine the other with scholarship offers, what to do?

When I am 50, and too much vodka & cranberry juice have washed away indelible bits of consciousness and common sense, I’ll stagger down the hallway to my room, forgetting to lock my door (Aisha left it half-open on her way out, consumed only by her own stupor) and wake up to find my door blown wide open by the railing North East wind, and my Super Double HD 65’ screen still in place, my laptop still in sleep mode and everything else exactly as I left it.

When I am 50, and I roll my eyes at hubby insisting on catching the news highlights before I settle in to the newest animation, we’d be just in time to catch Munita Rajpal or her younger replacement reporting that, “ . . . for the first time ever, an African nation has been declared the most desirable nation on earth to live in . . . after the break we’ll find out why . . .”

Nigeria.

Not Almost, Perfect!

Today I met Mr. Perfect. His name wasn’t Peter. His name wasn’t John. His name didn’t rhyme with Washington or Beckham or any of those posters hanging on teenage girls’ walls, or stripped off the walls and transcribed onto their older, married minds. In fact, I’d wager 102.5% of my paycheck you’ve never heard of him, or never would have until this very point of reading.

Even then he may not have as powerful an impression on you as he has or had on me, depending on my present state of mind.

Over 6ft tall – the one thing you certainly couldn’t take away from him was his height. Yet it was not particularly his most endearing feature. Don’t get me wrong, you certainly couldn’t ignore it. But it was a feature u could – at least I easily took – take for granted, like, “of course, he’s tall, what else could you expect of this Adonis-type Man? Although it does contribute to his full-time charisma, his schooled facial expressions and his dazzling white smile. Perfect. Our meeting wasn’t a Mills & Boon dead end. In other words, I didn’t bump into him back to chest, while I was yelling the last lines of the latest Gossip Girl episode to my BFF; our eyes didn’t lock & hold when I dropped my monthly technical report on my way to the MD’s office as we both simultaneously bent to pick it up; and no, our fingers didn’t brush when I handed him a copy of the same report during the monthly board meeting. None of that corny M&B stuff.

A lot of this corny M&B stuff. The sound of his voice was like melting snow, heating the chills that travelled down my spine with each word. I kept praying that he would speak, that he would need to say something, anything, just to make a mess of my gently angled spine. His lips aimed Cupid’s arrows as they moved in sync, and his eyes shot those arrows straight through a certain part of me. And when he turned around and walked away, I could tell instantly that he was or had been a model, those well trained steps that could never fall or falter. Then he stopped suddenly but the lightness of it only served to give him balance. Planting first one foot, then the left as he stood at ease, all effortlessly, he could easily have been a soldier, but there was nothing stiff about his stance.

He would look good in uniform. He certainly gave the obviously YSL Royal Cut suit value for its money ( I would know, what with me being a huge sucker for men who look nothing but dashing in suits). He was a cut away from my regular specs – sharp, straight shoulders. His broad shoulders sloped gently filling every warp and weft of the 2-buttoner. He was the reason I would clause specs no. 27 of my Things That Make Him My Mr. Perfect list – “. . . or gently-sloping shoulders that reward any suit its money’s worth). Hell, he would look good in anything. Or nothing at all (yummm!) He was just one of those lucky, specially bred species of men. And they were few and far between and especially hard to come by. Heck, we had more chances of finding a building in Haiti these days.

Yet, I’d found him. And he was mine, all mine. His mind, his wit, his brain cells, gave me reason to praise every second. He was to die for. And I was certainly dying. Endorphins were working overtime to keep up and I knew I was fighting a losing battle because I could feel myself falling, falling, falling head over heels in love with him.

We’ve met 7 times this week already. And I am not letting go. Every single day I meet with him. He takes centre stage in my 15 by 15’ space . . . and then I let him take me on a journey from my world to his

Seducing Mr. Perfect. Mr. Perfect. Daniel Henney. Have you met him?