Small girls these days are trying, o. They are smarter than their elders, I swear!
All the news I have heard about the Super TV boss that was murdered has left me wondering especially with many people saying the man is at fault. That is nonsense, the small girls out there are “olosos”!
Why am I talking like this? Well, something similar almost happened to my dad, only this time, he lived to tell me his side of the story.
What happened?
First, let me give you a background.
My parents have been together for more than 43 years and in all of these years my mother had always been the one who wore the trousers.
She is the strict parent, the one who flogged us when needed, the one who decided everything in the house.
My dad is a gentleman to the core but he is also a man who didn’t stand up for us many times or for himself; and I do not blame him, if you had my mother as wife, you would be like that.
We ran to daddy when things with our mother got bad but daddy never saved us…you see, instead my mum would beat us right in front of my dad and if he tried to shield us, she would hit him too
So, you see dad, couldn’t even save himself.
Was my mum a bully?
She was, still is but my parents have a chemistry, they love each other. I think my mum felt my father wasn’t being man enough, so she decided to be the man.
Would you believe I have overheard conversations among my dad’s friends mocking him. They say my mum is the husband and he the wife and yet many of them do not have the kind of relationship my parents have with their wives.
Well, I love him still, like any son would love his father. I never berated him nor felt he ought to be more of a man, he was just a decent man trying to live his life with a woman who may be too much for him.
With the benefit of hindsight, I see that my dad must have felt thoroughly emasculated by my mum at some point to dabble into an affair with a much younger girl. otherwise, why was he sneaking around with a girl young enough to be his own grandchild?
I said girl because though my dad is educated, he fell for this girl, 19years old and uneducated leading you to ask: “what hath light got to do with darkness?”
Who is the girl, a fish seller!
Yes, she supplied fish to a canteen not far from my dad’s office.
Vina is her name and she is Egun, those riverine people. I got to know the details from my dad.
My dad just told me Vina was nice to him. Vina knew what fish he liked, how he liked it and she served him accordingly…she not only supplied fish, she also helped the canteen owner attend to customers, that’s how my dad got to meet her.
So in all his life, a woman who knew what type of fish and how he liked his fish was worth all the wahala?
When Vina didn’t show up for work or supply fish, my dad made enquires and was told she had problems at home. Daddy said he went to find her at Makoko, where she lived. She lived in a raft, of sorts, in the murky waters of Makoko…the slum area you see when you are on Third Mainland bridge…yes, Vina lived there.
Can you see something here?
Dad lived in Surulere, he went looking for sex in Makoko!
I don’t exactly know when my father began to sleep with this girl but he told me after he visited her at Makoko and saw the pitiful condition she lived in, he wanted to help her. He must have begun to give her money and maybe that’s when they began to have sex…
I know that afterwards, Vina came to tell my dad she was pregnant for his child.
I am a married man, so if my father calls me to tell me some girl was pregnant for him, what am I supposed to think?
That he had been taken advantage of. My father was in his early 70s when this happened and though I am not saying he couldn’t father a child, when I saw the so called Vina, I knew the smart person in the relationship was definitely Vina. She is no innocent child though she claimed to be just 19 years.
I knew my mother must never hear about this or daddy was a dead man!
So I went with him to try and talk Vina into helping herself and us, by committing an abortion because, I mean, let’s face it, having a child for a man in his 70s, one who would never even marry you…e get as e bi.
But of course, Vina and her people had seen a ‘rich man’ with a rich son, who would take care of their troubles. They said nobody committed abortion in their family and so, they would keep the baby!
I told Vina’s mother, “Look, your child will suffer, do you think I will take responsibility for your baby if my father suddenly dies tomorrow?”
The woman was just looking at me, finally she said we should give them whatever we had. I said, I won’t, “remove the pregnancy and I will pay you something to set yourself up!”
They didn’t remove the pregnancy.
I think my father may have been telling Vina not to mind me and that he would take care of the baby…
Some months after that visitation, my dad called me, he said i shouldn’t worry myself about Vina, that she had given birth to a baby boy and he had given her money for the naming ceremony.
I was about to start shouting on the phone when he dropped the bomb!
“…when we got to their place for naming ceremony, it was another man who was called out to be the father, a much younger man.”
I burst out laughing instead.
So, my father could have been mugu-ed into accepting a baby that wasn’t his?
Come, what is this world turning to?
You want to give one man’s pregnancy to another person? Girls are trying o. I hail!
(series written and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories)