Chapter 2 Continued

My parents were in the living room when I got in.
‘Good evening, daddy’, ‘Good evening mummy’ I said, genuflecting a little.
My dad grunted a reply while reading the Guardian newspaper, the Thisday newspaper was next to him and he passed it to me as part of a daily ritual. I sat with them for a while alternating between reading the news and watching desperate housewives. As Gaby was about to burst into her house after hearing her husband and the maid moaning on the baby monitor in Lynette’s house, my father picked up the remote control and changed the channel.
‘Sorry ladies, important match today, Aston Villa…….’
‘It’s nearly over now’ my mum said, ‘Go back jo, let me finish before you change it’.
‘Well that’s the reason we got dual cable, if you hurry you can catch the end upstairs. This match is really big!’
‘Never ending football…..grown men running around in shorts…so rude’, my mum was mumbling under her breath. We packed up our things in a huff and moved up to the designated children’s parlour to continue the show.
‘So how is Ose?’ mum asked
‘She's fine; Nosa proposed to her, she’s very excited’
‘Heyyyyyyyy, thank God ohhhhhhhhh. Isn’t that nice?’
‘Yes very nice mum’ I said abruptly, trying to end the conversation.
‘See, she met Nosa at university!’ she said sitting up suddenly.
‘Are you trying to tell me you could not even find one nice guy at university because that is where most girls meet the men they marry’
‘I did not meet any guys at university mum’ I said in a bored tone. I had told her this many times.
‘But you are so good looking and such a nice girl. Is it that they are not approaching you?’ I didn’t respond, I was concentrating on the show on TV, Flavor Flav was suddenly so cute, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
‘No, that’s not it, you must be rejecting them’ she continued ‘Your aunty Liz rejected all the men that wanted to marry her. There was one who was really sweet and liked her so much and she said his nose was too big’.
‘Mum you have told me this story so many times’ I moaned. She pretended she did not hear me
‘To tell you the truth, it was gigantic but he loved her and that should have counted for a lot but all she kept on saying was, DID YOU SEE HIS NOSE!’ She said it with her eyes wide open.
‘But now he is married, has four kids, works for Shell and has several properties.’
‘And guess what, only one of his kids has a big nose, poor thing but one out of four is a blessing’. ‘Where is she now?’, ‘She is still single! I’m telling you, once you pass the ages of about twenty-five to twenty-eight, you start getting fewer offers and then you are left on the shelf.
I was bored, even the scary girls on Flavor Flav were not penetrating the force field that was my mother.
‘Mummy things have changed. More and more women are concentrating on their careers and marrying later, the so called shelf life has moved up, twenty-three is too young. It’s not like those days when a woman needed a man to take care of her. I don’t have to rush into marriage since I can take care of myself. I will marry for love only and nothing else.'
‘No one is saying you should rush, but when do you want to meet your husband not to talk of marrying him? Time is ticking.’
‘Can we end this conversation please, I’m tired besides Flav is about to hand out clocks to his chicks’ I said in a very irritated tone.
‘Okay sorry, watch your program.’
But I wasn’t really watching. My mother didn’t know how much pressure she put on me with all her comments, stories, pep talks, inquisitions, trials, and criticisms, just everything. I already had enough to deal with without her piling hers on me.

I thought about Timi and how he was doing. He had ripped my heart out, stabbed it with a pitch fork then proceeded to jump all over it like rumpelstiltskin did while tearing out his hair and finally did that nasty drag of phlegm behind his throat thing and spat on it with disgust. I had made up my mind that all men were dogs and swore them all off. To make things worse I heard terrible stories all the time. First the one about my cousin getting dumped by the guy who said she wasn’t his soul mate then Amara’s boyfriend took all her savings and eloped with his housegirl, Gina’s boyfriend beat her black and blue for disrespecting him and Bukky’s husband who never came home and could always be found at La Casa nightclub. Why would I have to put myself through such torture? I stuck to my guns, men sucked.

These feelings of disgust towards all men stayed for a while but with time had abated. I still was overly cautious when it came to men but if I met a dashing handsome young man who was intelligent, sensitive, kind and funny, then maybe I would consider going on one date with him. I only ever met mula’s. It was a codename created by me and Ose. We would rate guys on a mula scale of 1 to 10. 1 being mildly mulalicious and 10 being extremely mulalicious and a great big No No. The measurement scale was based on several things including dress sense, intelligence, habits, confidence, job or just how moody we felt on that particular day. The last guy I had a date with was mulaliciously 7….Disastrous.

My mum changed the channel to Africa Magic, a channel dedicated to African movies designed for laughter. A movie called Beware of 419 was on and a lady was talking to a guy dressed in a matching tracksuit as well as a baseball cap and a huge panda chain around his neck which said FITY CENT. She was trying to convey anger by squinting so much that I thought there might have been a smell in the room or maybe she needed glasses.
‘Sharon it is imperative that you proceed with caution in this matter or forever hold your piss.’ said tracksuit man.
‘Kunle I care not for your threat and bullies, you ken go to hell today or tomorrow!’.
Sometimes the acting was so comical and the plot so out of this world that at the end you felt strangely cheated for all the time that was wasted watching the movie but I loved them anyway. I was tired but wanted to see how the movie would end so we stayed up watching part one and then part two. Finally the movie came to an abrupt end and we were pissed off as we dragged ourselves to bed, dreading the thought of having to wake up in only a few hours.

Discussion...

Are any of you under pressure by your family to get married? How old do you think is a suitable age to be married and what age is too old?