Of women who always borrow money

There I was, sitting with a male friend, talking about stuff people talk about prior to the mad Christmas rush, when our (not) interesting conversation was interrupted by a text message, a message that lit up his face like a candle would light up a cave at night (I can be poetic too).

Being me and in my nosy mood, I wanted to know the content — truth be told, I was pretty certain that it was a sassy text from his significant other; I wanted to know what the text said so I could copy and paste it to my significant other, just so he could have that smile on his face.

But alas! The text was not from the wife. The smile, contrary to what I had thought, was a sneer (didn’t know you could make a smile resemble a sneer, but you learn something new every day).

The text was from what he called a random girl (phrases you hear) who wanted him to lend her a couple of thousand shillings.

BLATANT BORROWING

So the smile/sneer on his face was his reaction to what he called the audacity of ‘today’s little girls’.

It was the week before Christmas and although most employers had ensured that there was a high turnover of cash in the market, exaggerated holiday budgets, both necessary and unnecessary ones, meant that most people still did not have enough money to meet their plans.

According to my friend, whom I will call J for the sake of family harmony, that was the fifth little girl in a week to want a couple of thousand shillings from him, apparently with a promise to pay back as soon as possible.

Methinks ‘as soon as possible’ in this case means ‘never’. My immediate thought was, was it J who attracted SME-like girls or are little girls borrowing more than we used during our little girl phase?

Truth be told, I do not recall borrowing so blatantly — men then used to catch the hint; we never really had to stoop that low, unless it was for absolutely genuine reasons like hospital bills.

J is not a man of small means. He also happens to be generous to a fault, so perhaps we should not blame the ‘little girls’ for thinking he was the guy to cushion their Christmas financial pain.

When you go ‘splashing’ cash around to people who have not asked for it, you give the impression that you would be happy to splash it around to people who take the trouble to ask for it.

People take advantage of benevolence, an unfortunate fact, and that was exactly what the little girls were doing with J.

So did J give out the two thousand shillings to each of the five girls? No, he did not, mainly because he has learned his lesson.

SPLASHING MONEY

J may be the benevolent sort (even call him a show-off, if you like, I know I have), but he insists he is not a fool, not anymore; he now knows when he is being fleeced.

His practical lesson was he lost enough ‘couple of thousand shillings’ too often to the ‘little girls’ because they never paid him back, same girls who clearly thought he was suffering from amnesia because a few months down the line, they would ask for another two thousand shillings with a promise to pay back in a couple of months.

Or perhaps it is the girls who had amnesia, who knows.

I like J, he is a good man, but I believe that there is something in his attitude that attracts these ‘little girls’.

Does he sleep with them? I have no idea, but the easiest assumption is that he does — a lot of women believe that sleeping with a man entitles them to a cut of his riches. J has a habit of spending money on food and drinks on people, for no particular reason.

This must, of course, make some people think there is money to be spent.

What would you tell J?