Can you believe that a ‘useless’ but humorous friend of mine told me just yesterday that once you are a leaving NP, you can be sure that not all the important roads in your area will be constructed!

If you like just pretend to be ‘called to glory’ which will require a bye-election in two days; - your road would be fixed in two hours! I don’t know how he meant but I realized that the resources to fix such bad roads suddenly drop from nowhere and it would be done before the bye-election day.

Abeg, he was just joking and talking to me as if I am an NP oo, yoo. Am I an NP? Hahahaaaaaa!  

Today is fridayyyyyyy and I have observed that anytime I decide to do fasting for God to do some miracle in my life, that is when all the sweet aromas of food and other things not necessarily ‘eaten by the mouth’ start crossing my path. That is when fufu light soup will waft across my nose tempting me to eat! Today for instance, I had declared it a day of fasting and prayers. Just when I was preparing to leave the house for work, that is when my wife took her bath and walked across the bedroom naked with torrents of water dripping down her body! As if that was not enough and in what appeared to be an attempt to spoil my fasting, she bent down to pick something from under the bed in front of me. Alla! That’s why I was late for work today and my Boss has prepared a query for me to answer. Me? I will tell him the truth o, hahahahahaa!

When somebody who has never been married before is advising a married couple as to what to do in marriage, I laugh aaa and enter guest house!  Such a person will often tell you what he or she has read from books that every married person can write about from their own perspective even after 3 months of marital experience!

I am sure you know by now that when you know you are about to fall and you fall, the pain is better managed than when you know you won’t fall and then you fall. No be so? That is the reason I think it is important to marry your enemy instead of your friend. When your enemy does things you don’t like you are not surprised. But when your friend does something you don’t like, then you go like ‘what a shock’.

Your ‘enemy’ is the one who does not pretend when in courtship with you but shows his or her weaknesses that you feel you cannot handle when you get married. Your ‘friend’ is the one who hides all those weaknesses ‘just to beat immigration’ and shows them only after marriage!

I once read an article somewhere I can’t remember. It was on Social Psychology and I learnt from it that one of the best strategies to resolve conflicts between two people is to put them together. When two enemies live together for a long time, they become the best of friends. The reverse may however not be the same! True? Well, let’s give it a try especially now that we have come to the reality that when two friends live together for some time as husband and wife, they become the worst of enemies at certain times in their lives and if care is not taken, the marriage hits the rocks!

It is perhaps one of the reasons I am often very happy when people fail to invite me to weddings nowadays. In the past 5 years alone, anytime I meet ten of the people whose weddings I had attended, chances are that when I ask of their partners, 3 would tell me: ‘Charlie, the ‘thing pascal o’! That ‘for better for worse’ thing is the biggest deception during declaration of marital vows. It has lost relevance and the earlier churches expunged it from marital vows the better! ‘I do’ should also be replaced with ‘I will try’ or what do you think?

In my village, you can’t say ‘for better for worse’ in a shrine and do otherwise o. Hmmm! To be on the safer side, just say ‘I will manage’ – a manifestation of the fact that we as Christians we fear the shrines more than we fear the Bible! Small thing, I want divorce because ‘my partner did not meet my expectations’. You know why? Because you married your ‘friend’ and expectations from friends are very high and if not met, can be very disappointing. So marry your enemy o, yooo!

I attended one such wedding recently and had the biggest regret of my life. The invitation time was 12noon. I got there at 12.30 and bride and groom were nowhere to be found. Apparently the wedding itself took place somewhere and the reception was what was fixed at 12noon. Guests wondered what prevented the couple from letting us know that the 12 given was only for the reception! When it was 3pm, guests were already getting hungry and angry bcos of the delay. Then at about 4 pm they appeared and and and….Oh My God! They appeared relaxed when entering the reception auditorium!

They now went out to the car park to take pictures while people were still waiting for them. The MC was even more annoying as he kept talking talking talking when people were already upset and visibly hungry. The MC didn’t know that nothing really entertains a hungry man. It was 4:44 and they came to sit down. Then the bride disappeared! As to where, some konkonsa people hinted that she had gone to the washroom and for close to 30 minutes…oh Lord God have mercy! Meanwhile people were still waiting to have the cake cut o! You should see the look on people’s faces especially those who had purged themselves and prepared their stomachs to come and eat and go without giving kapr3 (a dime) as gift!

As of 5.48pm, I just didn’t understand what was happening - drinks and meals were still not served. People started exiting one after the other out of annoyance. I saw some buying meat-pie and yoghurt on the way home bcos they had starved themselves for long. Ohhhhh! It was pathetic!

Did I hear it is believed that when wedding procedures are delayed, such events guarantee successful marriages? Uninteresting joke!

Anyway, my concern is that when you marry your enemy, expectations are less and you take it easy with life and manage it like that.  

Typical of this ‘useless column’ , let me digress as usual, why is it that when they ask us to start exercising, we refuse till it gets to that time in our lives when nobody advises us but we start jumping up and down by ‘hat’? ‘No pain no gain! No pain no gain!  No pain no gain! ‘Instructor would say ‘stretch your legs’ and he will do it with his fat stomach. ‘Jump and twist’, he will comply. ‘Twist your ‘useless’ waist and he will do it. ‘Stop eating too many eggs’, he will now start eating fruits and vegetables. Stop eating too much meat and he won’t even try snails! ‘Bend down and hold your body’ and he will comply.

Ajeeeeeei! I am just sitting my somewhere laughing at Tom Brown, my neighbor who just turned 42. Five years ago, when you advised him to do all these exercises and desist from some eating habits, he will tell you ‘man must die of something’. Now he is afraid that if he dies early from poor life style and lack of exercising, his children will suffer and his sweet wife will be available to some id**ts to come and ‘chop’ kpluya kpluya kpluya when he is sojourning underground forever at Awudome.

He is now jumping by ‘hat’ as if his entire survival depended on it. You have not seen anything yet, Tom Brown. Wait till you are told your liver is enlarged bcos of fats around it. It is then you would realize that after all, the moon in America is not exactly the same as the moon in Tetegu! Keep jumping! You would fly soon. Hahaaa!

Yes yes yes, I was talking about marrying your enemy before that ‘useless’ paragraph crossed my path! While caught up in the usual useless traffic during the rush hours recently, I heard someone honking at me. Lo and behold it was Martin, my neighbor. He immediately started apologizing profusely for forgetting to invite me to his daughter’s wedding ‘last Saturday’. I responded in shock and pretended to be angry at him. In actual fact I had to express how unhappy I was about it because as neighbours what on earth could make him forget about me, ern! Truth was, inwardly, I was happy I was not invited.

Nowadays in order to honour all invitations to social events, on Saturdays, I put on black and white shirt. When I get to a wedding programme I would be accepted. I move to the next funeral and I am still fine.

So why don’t I thank my God if you fail to invite me to your wedding? Ah ah! I will only give thanks to God!

As this year is running so fast and today being July 19^th already, if you are single remember that the best person to get married to is your enemy and your expectations will be far less and you would live long. In any case when you marry your friend, he or she would definitely become your enemy from time to time and that is when you start getting upset over little little surprises!

But don’t invite me to your wedding but after marriage manage your own like that; we are all managing! You hear? Hahaaaaa!