by Eketi Edima Ette
Levels Dey…
I am short.
Gaskiya, I am just reach 5 foot “3 inches without my heels or kitchen stool (Laugh at your own risk. Just know that people have been unfriended for less. Nonsense and covfefe!)
Yes, I have to stand on the tip of my tippy toes to reach the plates on the lowest level of my kitchen cupboard (I wholeheartedly forgive the carpenter who put it so high. As if I told him I was going for the Stretching Olympics).
Anyway, I used to get angry when people made digs at short people. Especially those persons who, without knowing me, would emphatically assert that ALL short people have anger issues and inferiority complexes.
Time passed and without knowing, I let their jabs and comments affect me, until I eventually acquired the very things they’d accused me of: a temper and an inferiority complex about my height.
I even stopped wearing the high-heeled shoes I liked, because I’d didn’t want people to think I was compensating.
But one fateful day – somebody say, ‘one fateful day,’ – my mother called me into her room after one such yabbing episode.
She said, “Kokomma, you’re not your height. You’re a mixture of many wonderful parts. Stop getting angry or self-conscious if someone takes a swipe at you for that. You’re more.
And if anyone is really being a pest about it, punch them. That’s what your height is for – you can easily reach that vulnerable area below the belt 
???.”
In that moment, I had a Eureka-ic kind of clarity. Little by little, I stopped feeling bad. I went back to my heels. I was more than 5″3.
Literally ?.
I raised the level of my self-confidence until it was taller than I am. Today, I have no issues with my height. I don’t get ticked off anymore.
Not even when someone told me not to marry a short man who was asking me out, because, “it would be like a curse on your children…. so you guys won’t give birth to midgets.”
Pause.
……… I can’t even remember why I’m telling you this story…..
Ah, yes!
There’s’s a stream in Akwa Ibom state, where salt water from the Atlantic flows into a fresh water stream. The two sources are of different temperatures and composition, so they don’t mix. It’s amazing, because you can actually see the different streams of water flowing side by side, but never mixing.
This reminds me of class and levels in life.
Whether we like it or not, these concepts will exist until the world ends. And if you’ve got a problem with someone’s level/class, or someone has an issue with yours, be like that stream in Akwa Ibom.
Don’t mix.
That is how one brother said he wanted to marry me, but said, “you must burn all your trousers, do away with all that make up and if you must wear weaves, you’ll wear reasonable ones, not those unnecessarily expensive Brazilian things.”
I told this brother, “Impossican’t, sir!”
I said he should find a sister in his church whose dressing he liked.
“No. We marry someone for their character, not clothes. It’s your character I’m attracted to. So, if you can do away with the irrelevant things, we can make this marriage work.”
I still told this uncle that there are girls in his church, who have both good characters and skirts and dresses.
Uncle still insisted I’m the one he wanted. But like the wise stream in my state, I faced my front and didn’t mix.
See, if you’re a tall woman, and you meet a man who’s a few inches shy of government height like me, and he’s not comfortable in his own skin (read height), RUN!
Why? Because one day, when you eventually have issues with him, he’ll accuse you of height-induced insubordination and failure to properly submit to him.
Ana m agwa gi eziokwu!
Brother, if you’ve got issues with your height, settle it first, before you find Sister A’Taller. Else, stay at your level or below your level.
Sister, if you’ve got a Master’s degree and he’s got an Ordinary Diploma, and you constantly needle him about it – not so he improves but to show your academic superiority, please, loose him and let him go.
Brother, if you find yourself in this situation, receive deliverance!
If he’s from a wealthy home, and you’re from a hamlet of twenty huts in Kafanchan, girl, back away. Slowly.
E no go work. Na me tell you.
Guy, if you’re the kind that comes from a family that survives on 100-naira-a-day, while her father gifted all his children with cars and houses on the day of their graduation from secondary school, please, evaporate from her atmosphere.
He’s Catholic and you’re Christ Embassy and you don’t see yourself going to Mass, neither does he see himself partaking in your spontaneous speaking in tongues. If you both can’t reach a compromise, walk away.
She believes you as the man should foot all the family’s and in-laws’ bills, while she watches the home. You think she should get a job and pitch in financially. If there’s no compromise, go ye this day peacefully, in different directions.
See, love is good, but love is not enough.
Don’t go and mezzup yasefs and then come and be asking us on shoshal meedia what you should do.
Don’t come here and give us heedick without Paracetamol.
Igwe’s son only successfully marries the palm wine tapper’s daughter in Africa Magic Epic. Especially if the Prince just returned from the abroad and the palm wine tapper’s is Queen Nwokoye.
You’re not Cinderella; he’s not Prince Charming. Don’t let the devil tempt you.
Even so, I must mention that there are exceptions to these scenarios, that work. I’ve seen two. These people paid hard prices though.
But like they say on those WWF broadcasts, if you’re not ready for their differences, “Please, Don’t Try This At Home.”
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