BY REV FR GERALD NWAFOR
From high school, boys and girls grew into teens and young adults, and began to have good and bad friends. Some people are rich today because of the friends they connected with, while some are poor and misled because of the friends they associated with. But sometimes our plan to establish friendship may be diverted by situations or events.
I was the fourth son in my family. I never saw anybody visiting my brothers who was not a classmate or schoolmate. In the same way, they always say they want to visit their colleagues in school. Visiting a friend is always a sweet thing because it is time to talk and chat and drink Coke, Sprite, or Fanta.
Later in life, you may add alcohol but that is not the topic now. Sometimes these friendships would last forever, some would not last at all and some would last a while and disappear.In marriage counseling, I always ask in a lighter mood how the couple met to start their union for life. There are fantastic stories out there and there are unexpected stories too (like finding love in an uncommon place).
As a Christian, there are some stories that you would say are destined and some are uncommon mistakes. I always try to listen attentively because there is always a story in history. So, I asked one of my clients how they got to meet each other. Here is the story.It was in a co-ed high school (boys and girls).
The boy contacted a girl for friendship, as many other kids would do. The girl was excited because the boy was one of the best boys in the school environment. The boy was good at basketball, baseball, football, track and field and was nicknamed Allsports.
The girl was pretty and elegant but had moved from the countryside to the big city. They both had a couple of moments together at school, and the attraction was mutual, and the chemistry matched. The boy hoped to visit the girl in her home since she said that she was living with her grannies and had a room for herself alone.
The boy had three sisters and three brothers, and they lived in a rented apartment of two rooms and one living room. So, the boy’s home could take any extra person as a friend or visitor. The girl said that they had a dwarf wall in the back yard, and her door was directly behind the dwarf wall. She went the extra mile to hang the school logo on her door to distinguish it from the rest of the doors in case the guy had any doubt about which door was the correct one.
They even took a walk around the house so she could point out her door to the boy. So, a date was picked, and a time was allotted for the rendezvous and the girl was to keep the door open so that immediately the boy made it across the wall he would walk straight to the door and zoom into the room, undetected by the grannies.On the D-day and at the appointed hour, the boy arrived and jumped over the dwarf wall.
A little dog (chihuahua) jumped on him and attacked him brutally. The boy fought back and pushed off the dog but lost his flowers, one of his shoes, his sunshade/sunglasses, and his baseball cap in the fray. He did not make it to the girl’s door.
He was afraid to go back over the wall, so he went back to his home disappointed. It was long before the arrival of cell phones that could have solved the problem to some extent. A call to the girl to explain the ordeal or the predicament he was facing at the moment could have alleviated the problem a little.
Meanwhile, his friend was waiting anxiously and was wondering why he would disappoint her, especially since he was the person who started the relationship. It was night and the was no sign of the boy. And the girl in anger locked her backyard door and went to bed.
The following day she did not want to talk to the boy anymore and the boy tried to explain that he was coming but a dog attacked him, and he lost some of his items in their back lawn. She replied that the dog is never allowed into the back yard, and when the girl went home there were no items on the lawn.
Unbeknownst to the girl, Grandma had picked up the flowers, sunglasses, a shoe, and a baseball cap and dropped them into the trash can and the trash truck had disposed of the trash. The girl concluded that the boy was lying and should not be trusted. The boy felt the girl did not want him any longer and decided to move on with another schoolgirl (his now wife) which is the reason why he calls her option B and the reason why I got the story out of them.
One Saturday afternoon, the girl looked at the back door and saw the little dog running around the grass lawn. She went to her granny and said that the dog was outside. Granny said that the dog was messing up the house when they were mopping the floor, but they would bring it in after mopping.
She asked if that was the norm, and Granny said not always but once in a while. She decided to ask if they picked up a baseball cap and sunglasses from the back lawn. They confirmed picking up those Items last month but because they looked masculine, they thought a homeless person must have dropped them and gone away and because it was a single shoe of a pair, they did not think it belonged to a reasonable prudent person, therefore they trashed it.
It was at this point that the girl realized that the boy was telling the truth. The grandma asked if those items belonged to her. She did not answer but walked away.Getting back to school on Monday, she went to the boy to get him back and apologize but the boy said that he had moved on. And that boy has been with wife (option B) for over thirty-five years now.
The wife said that he did not tell her the story until they had their fourth child. I did my due diligence in this case, but think about how you got your friend, your wife, or your business partner. There is always a story behind it.
