On a calm morning roughly seven years ago, I was on my way to school, my mind just floated around like a butterfly in the air, I was neither happy nor sad, just in a normal mood. There was nothing to be excited about, the only advantage school had over staying at home was the abundance of friends it offered. At least in school you had an array of people to talk to, laugh with and jeer at. So this particular morning, while strolling the five-minute distance from my house to my usual bus stop, I saw this beautiful girl walking towards me, she was tall, light-skinned and had braids to complement her looks, the fact that she wore the uniform of an upscale school in the neighborhood lent more relevance to her allure. All these however did not strike an unusual chord with me as I was used to seeing several ‘fine’ babes. Infarct I had a number of them in Church whom I already had secret crush on.
What was special about this particular girl was how she wore her smile. I had left home by 7:01am, so I was sure the time was barely 7:05am, this early morning, with the usual Lagos traffic casually building up, a couple of workers and students milling the streets, breakfast vendors carrying their wares on their head, at the bus stop ahead, mama Nkechi was scooping fluffy Akara balls out of the hot pan and right here in front of me was this beautiful smiling mermaid. She wore her smile like there was a thousand miracles behind them, it was still early for miracles, I mean it was still early for even the sun to peek a smile from behind the waning clouds, but here was this young girl already aglow with happiness. She walked past me like everyone else, but it seemed like time stopped and that that encounter which actually lasted seconds had taken an hour.
I wondered what exactly could make someone so happy that early in the day. Could it be that her Dad had given her double of her usual ‘break money’, did her aunt who travelled to the UK since she was a baby just come back to Nigeria, maybe her immediate elder brother just gained admission into the university, or better still, was she ecstatic about meeting a new found love in school.
Thinking of it now, it could be any one of these reasons, but that never bothered me, I mean I thought there was no reason good enough for someone to radiate so much cheerfulness that early in the morning. In all her innocence and infectious happiness, that girl may not have known how much impact she had on a passerby, but seeing that smile on her face and the way she wore it inside out, confidently and without any trace of concern about whatever reason she should be sad, seeing that girl shelve the million and one reasons why everyone else was sad, frowning or straight-faced led me to a make a milestone resolution in my life. I resolved that day never to be sad, never to let my worries, difficulties and challenges wear me down, I decided that day never to be the ‘serious’ type of person who always found an official reason for everything. That day, I realized that bad things would happen, sometimes very tragic events; people would die, family may go broke, girlfriends may breakup with me in the middle of a sweet relationship, Jamb may mess me up, the pastor may even decide to use me as an example of a bad youth during Sunday service, people can laugh at my choice of clothes, pick on my bad grammar, I mean they can call me ugly, shameless, poor, nerd, talentless that day I opened a new thrash can in my mind called ‘sadness’. Ever since, I have thrown everything that ever wanted to make me sad into this trashcan.
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