David Edeh: My not so perfect Valentine gift (30 Days, 30 Voices)

 

by David Edeh

Coded

”I knew fully well that later that night I would go shopping for my babe (wohoo!); I couldn’t wait to be through with CST 121, I couldn’t care less about the lecture on Microsoft Excel.”

Writing is not as easy as I imagined. I don’t want to be cliché and talk about my life as a producer, so I’ve thought to tell you about a particular relationship I was in a few years back.

Well, I have never really been a ‘relationship person’ but “she” caught my attention. Beautiful as hell. Beauty wasn’t only in the eyes of the beholder, I’m very sure everybody saw it too. This relationship story started in the university, just like any other love story, she had supposedly seen the future of how our kids would look like, if we would further our education in the same country or where we would likely get married.

As a supposed ‘G’ at that time, that particular future she tried to paint wasn’t very clear to me. I was only concerned with the fact that I was dating a fine girl that most guys wanted to be with. At some point, I began to like her excessively. I think it was turning to love, but as a supposed ‘G’ at that time, why will I exhibit my mumu button to this aunty? So I suppressed it.

At the end of the day, the feeling overwhelmed me and I was supposedly in love with my girlfriend. When I over-like somebody, it tends to limit my thinking and I immediately seek for external help. Valentine’s Day was around the corner, so I sought for help to plan the day. I didn’t want to mess this up, seeing that February 14th is the world day to show love, while putting in mind that if I should mess up with this gift, her friends will laugh at us. Most especially me. My swag will be cut down by half and I might not be able to recover from such ridicule. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this was my first year at school.

Well, my quest for external help took me to my roommate, whom at that point in time was my best friend. When you are locked up with somebody in a room in Covenant University, frustration sets in. When you think about the way of life in the school, it makes you want to pour your heart out and the best person to tell all this will have to be your roommate, who will eventually become your best friend; when you know fully well that you have no other person to talk to. This brings me to his name “Chris”. (I’m sorry Chris, I have to tell YNaija the story *tears rolling*) . Chris, my best friend by circumstance, sat down and listened to my predicament- How I didn’t want to mess Valentine’s Day up and all- so he decided to sleep on the issue of what to get, bearing in mind that a brother’s bank account was suffering like the situation of Job in the bible.

The next day came and we went for lectures. Meanwhile, I knew fully well that later that night I would go shopping for my babe (wohoo!); I couldn’t wait to be through with CST 121, I couldn’t care less about the lecture on Microsoft Excel.

Yes friends, I still remember. “See you all next class and pass the attendance for all the programs forward” was a sentence that threw me up on my feet. It was finally the end of the lecture. I quickly looked for my friend and we walked back to the hall, together as usual. We loitered around for a bit, till it was dark and then we embarked on our search for “the perfect gift”.

Making our way to the shopping mall, I thought to myself, nothing could stop me now. I was going to burst the head of my girlfriend with a gift. Chris and I started looking around. The first of our series of bad decisions, which was a dope idea at the time, was to get “all red everything”- some love swag thing. Wa ya say!  My friend Chris first spotted a red belt. I was overjoyed. Yes! Yes! It’s red! We failed to notice how small the belt was and how it wouldn’t fit my girlfriend. Error number 1.

We looked around for more red items. I’m sure if I had seen any red juice I would have taken it. But the only other thing we saw were kit kat chocolate bars. Once again. Jackpot! It’s red. We put 12 or thereabout in our basket. That single act became Error number 2. We looked around but to no avail. There were no more red items. Our journey was about to end in an abrupt way, until we spotted a red paper bag. Jackpot!! Something to put our items in. Chris and I couldn’t contain our smile. As they say “over joy was worrying us”. We got that and our perfect gift was ready.

I couldn’t wait to get to her hall to deliver my Valentine’s Day gift. I felt like the perfect boyfriend with the perfect gift. Little did I know, I was being aided to destroy my relationship with the series of errors in that red bag. I’m sure Chris never meant harm but I didn’t know we both had no clue. I thought I was getting quality help from a bro. Oh well, life is never fair. So, I waited outside for a while for her to come down. She was taking too long, so I ate one of the kit kat bars, making it 11 left. I disposed the wrapper far away so as to cover my tracks. She finally came down; we hugged with so much passion. I cut it short because I just wanted to give her my gift. Finally, I gave her the gift. She was going to take it in and look at it, but I insisted she opened it in my front, because I felt I was going to see joy in her eyes. That act became my final error.

She brought out the belt first, tried it on but to my surprise it wasn’t her size. I saw the disappointment in her eyes, but still she smiled. It then occurred to me that the next thing she was going to see were a whole lot of chocolate bars. I immediately became weak. She saw all of them and hugged me again. We stayed together for a while, before she went back in. I wanted to weep on the spot, because I knew her friends were going to diss me.

To cut this story short and not bore you with my past; if somebody should ask me how we broke up, I’ll say we just grew apart but it’s actually more like she grew away from me and just left me to die. I’m sure she listened to her friends and left a brother to wallow in pain. Well, I moved on. I never knew the wrong gift could ‘cause so much havoc, but it did. Okay, I’m going to end this now. Please don’t judge me.

My not so perfect gift (insert smile)

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David Edeh is known by people in the music industry as Coded; an indigene of Enugu state and a graduate of Computer science from Covenant University. He is currently the In-house producer for Koga Ent. and has been a producer for 4 years. He tweets from @CodedV

30 Days 30 Voices series is an opportunity for young Nigerians from across the world to share their stories and experiences – creating a meeting point where our common humanity is explored.

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija

 

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