REUNION

     Its 10.15am Saturday morning, you are still lying in bed trying to make excuses why you should not attend this year’s college reunion later that evening. Your wife walks into the bedroom with a smile and casually tells you, “its once a year honey, it won’t kill you..” and you snuggle tighter to your pillow with a frown on your face, pretending to painfully open your eyes, and if your wife is mine, she'll pull the sheets off your body, leaving you exposed to the imaginary cold you are running from and then, with a frown and stern voice, she calls out “Frank Edoho, get up and pick out a suit for tonight”  and if you are as dumb as a lot of guys, you actually begin to think your wife cares if you go to that reunion or not... The truth is, this gives her a great opportunity to try out that new dress you got on your last trip to England for as they call it, “summer”.

You are not like really doing bad in your line of work, the problem is that your old friends are a bit well.. More successful. You remember  Emeka, with the strong Ibo accent, yeah.. The one you dissed a lot in school, who actually wanted to be your pal? Emeka goes to work in his blue PJ, while his wife goes in the pink one! And for your information PJ does not mean pyjamas, it means Private Jet.

    You finally arrive the event at about 7pm, not too early and not too late. I will pretend to overlook how you parked further into the parking-lot, who would blame you, your modest automobile would have indeed seemed invisible amidst all that heavy metal, they actually put a lot of steel into the production of Range rovers and Escalades, but what the heck, your car is your car my brother!

 As your walk in, closely followed by your wife who is the only person actually proud of you in the building or at least to have ‘accepted the things she cannot change’, you avoid eye contact with certain people in the place, looking for guys of  “your own class and below”, but just when you think you’d pulled it off, from behind, you hear... “my God, Victor Ehilome, look at you!”. Reluctantly you turn round to a voice you’ve so often heard address people or make speeches on television... ‘him’.

He was actually a nice guy once, ‘when he wasn’t so rich’, things changed after his appointment as commissioner for information and culture. A false smile plays round your lips and you reply with a croaky voice, “Ah.. Honourable, you made it, how is that wonderful family of yours?”.  which isn’t at all what you would like to tell him, a peek into your mind would probably have the words interpreted thus, ''Ah.. this braggart, so you showed up, shouldn’t you be somewhere praising yourself and talking down on innocent broke us?''

to be continued...