LIFE BY LOUIS: Valentine’s Day blues

Louis is reminded of the first time he met the word love. ILLUSTRATION| IGAH

What you need to know:

  • I experienced a mild heart attack when my niece sent me a text message “Hey Uncle, Happy Valentines, I love you”.
  • Luckily for me, I was still in bed and with minimal risk of fainting in the bathroom and falling into dirty bath water and probably drowning on Valentine’s Day.

Now that the much hyped about month of love is behind us, we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

We can also call a truce so that all the missing men can finally come out of hiding. 

The big day did not pass me by without ruffling my erstwhile nonchalant attitude towards all the hullabaloo and toxic capitalism that accompanies it. 

I experienced a mild heart attack when my niece sent me a text message “Hey Uncle, Happy Valentines, I love you”.

Luckily for me, I was still in bed and with minimal risk of fainting in the bathroom and falling into dirty bath water and probably drowning on Valentine’s Day.

In my clan, if an elder of my status falls down without a reasonable explanation, the clan elders would be forced to pick him up with a goat.

INNOCENT GOAT

That means an innocent goat would have had to lose its life as a cleansing sacrifice for my unfortunate predicament.

I quickly deleted the message. . 

was taught that love means you want to marry someone and burden her with many children.

It was not vocabulary to be squandered by nieces, uncles and other random people.

I was in Class Three and still learning all subjects in my native language when I first met the word love.

I was an avid storybook reader, of course with some persuasion from Wa Hellen hovering above me with a big stick.

So this day, my classmate Sue borrowed my storybook, I didn’t know her as an enthusiastic reader but I obliged. She promptly returned it the following day.

I thought that was too fast for someone who was not an avid reader but who was I to judge her reading speed. 

When I reached home, I found a neatly tucked note inside the pages. It was Sue’s outpouring of her heartfelt feelings towards me.

In the note, she had called me several fruits, confectionaries, freshly squeezed juices and glucose.

The note had flowery drawings of red hearts and purple arrows. 

My catechist had vigorously preached to our young souls against the perils of boy-girl relationships, so I promptly destroyed that piece of evidence.

I proceeded to scold her the following morning for messing up with my young holy heart and leading me to the path that goes straight to the fires hell. 

She later made several other advances with varying levels of success, but she repeated classes and we lost touch. 

I do not understand up to this day how such a young soul could know so much about the rudiments of love. 

YEARS LATER

Many years later, when I was in college she got married to a friend, and we temporarily lived in the same neighbourhood during the holidays. 

I met her one morning when she was outside washing clothes and wearing a big dress that suggested that she was soon going to be a mother.

I could hardly face her though I noticed she still looked as magnificent as ever. With a limp handshake and deeply blushed cheeks and gaze permanently fixed to the ground, I said hello and we exchanged a few awkward pleasantries. I profusely apologised to her for being such a fool back in Class Three, and I conveniently avoided her for the rest of the holiday. 

I never saw Sue again after that.