Memorables

I’ve been extremely busy at work since my last writing, so cleaning up my existing drafts or even starting a new writing has been a drag. But while doing dishes recently, I started reminiscing about some of my favourite memories from the past.

By nature, I have better long-term than short-term memory, and what that means is I can typically paint vivid pictures of events from the past - as far back as childhood - in my head. Some of these events are blehhh, but a lot of them are very memorable. In this post, I want to talk about two of the memorable ones - even if only so they can serve as a reference for my much much older self.

In my early childhood, my most memorable events revolved around my family. Growing up, we had a family tradition where on certain nights, we would have dinner, seated on a mat outside the building but within our compound. On one of the nights, everyone was home, my siblings had come home from uni, and this is how I remember it. My mom made beans and plantain for dinner while I took the mat out to the compound. We had also turned on the halogen light overlooking the compound. Once the food was ready, we set the table (mat-on-the-floor really), then my dad spent some time spraying the house for bugs and mosquito after we had all stepped out. That dinner, as I remember it was fun. When we had finished eating, we didn’t go straight into the house immediately either, we needed the mosquito spray to diffuse and leave the house. So we just sat there, gisting and laughing. I’m almost certain there was some time in the midst of this happiness that it came to the fore of my mind that I’ll have to do the dishes and that probably caused a dip in joy levels, considering the fact that doing dishes was my greatest bother in early childhood as the last born 😭. I don’t know for sure why this memory has stuck, but it just has, and for most of my life.

The second event is one that wasn’t particularly happy at the time, but I’ve always found it memorable. However, these days, when I think back to that time in my life, I just laugh at myself a lot. It’s funny, really.

In my first year of senior secondary school, I had developed a crush on this girl who was my classmate (I’ll call her Funke for this post). I thought Funke was very beautiful. At first, I tried containing the feeling. But as time passed, I lost the ability to. I told Funke how I felt about her, tried showing her that I would do anything to win her over, then finally asked her to be my girlfriend. Her response was simple - “I’m not ready for a relationship now, but when I am, it’ll be you”. I took that response and ran with it. I spent the rest of my SS1 and most of my SS2 preparing for when she’d be ready. I knew there were other people in my class who liked her - both openly and discreetly, so I wanted to make sure I was in a prime position for her to turn to when she was ready. But then, something happened. We were in SS2. I was in the library, and the way the library in my school was set up, each seat was its own cubicle and you couldn’t see who was seated opposite you or to your sides. On that day, Funke had come in after me and sat opposite me. We both didn’t know we were seating opposite each other. The next thing I knew was a conversation happening between Funke’s and a male voice. In that conversation, I had heard words along the lines of “I love you” and it sounded like they both meant it. My head had gone bust. As they both left the library a few minutes later, I tried to catch a glimpse of who the guy was. It was Samson (also not real name) - one year our senior. I realised that Funke was already ready for in a relationship, and she hadn’t turned to me.

When I got home from school that evening, I just kept crying. Uncontrollably. When my dad got back from work, he’d spoken about food but I told him I wasn’t hungry. I truly wasn’t. I was heartbroken. You could say it was my first true heartbreak. I don’t find the process of trying to woo Funke memorable, but the “Day Of The Heartbreak” - from finding out to sobbing through the night - is forever etched in my memory, and surprisingly, in a fond and “interestingly-naive-me” way, rather than in a bitter way.

In a decade from now, I wonder what the most memorable events from the current phase of my life will be.