Tall, dark, handsome and rich

"Tall, dark, handsome, and rich" was exactly how she described her ideal man, anything less was almost unacceptable. I thicked all the boxes except of course, the last one which, by the way, was the most important of them all for her.

Although I fitted in the first three boxes, but I lacked the last and the most important of them all. It did not matter to her that I had other beautiful qualities such as the fact that I was loving, caring, and kind hearted. According to her, even if a man lacked one of the mentioned qualities, it should never be the last one.

I called her almost everyday confessing my feelings to her, and with the promise to love and care for her. I wrote beautiful poems to her every morning, and made sure another beautiful poem was the last message she got before she slept. It seemed to have started working for me when for the first time, she replied to one of the poems I had sent her.

"Thank you so much dear, I love the poem, good morning"

I couldn't believe my eyes, she had just replied my message. I wasn't sure about what to do next. I wondered if I should call her, or text her in reply to her reply to me. While I was lost in "wonder land", my phone rang, and guess who called me, Jenny. This was too good to be true. She had just replied my message and she was calling me? "This must be a dream" I thought.

As soon as I answered, "hello Carthy" she said, with the sweetest tone I had ever heard. I grinned from one ear to the other at the sound of her voice. "Hello Jenny" i responded, trying as hard as possible not to show my excitement, but my voice could not hide my excitement, I am sure she heard the excitement in my voice.

"Hey Carthy, my birthday is in three days time, I am just telling you so you would get my gift ready and so that you would know that you would take me out too"

"Ok, Jenny, no problems at all" I responded before she hung up. At the time, I only had my school fees, part of which I had spent, and I was struggling with how to get it completed so I could pay before the deadline for payment. Failure to pay your school fees in AE FUNAI on or before deadline meant an extra ten thousand naira for late payment, but deadline was a month or two away.

Somehow, I was able to convince myself I could squeeze out another ten thousand naira from the remaining balance I had and that I could raise the money before deadline. For me, ten thousand was by no means a small amount of money, hence, I imagined that with that amount, I would take Jenny out to a nice place, have a good time, and then buy her a gift with the left over.

At the time, we didn't have any where better than "Munchy Crunchy" Munchy Crunchy was a restaurant at the back gate in AE FUNAI. I was sure that as long as we were within the school premises, there was absolutely no way we could spend as much as five thousand naira on food. At this point, I was starting to think that ten thousand was too much. At most, we would spend two thousand naira on food, then I'd give her four thousand naira to buy a gift for herself and then, I'd still have an extra four thousand naira. It was just the perfect plan.

Jenny began to call me every day, and each time she called, we spoke for quite a long time. Ah! finally, this girl is inlove with me. She laughed at every joke I told, and replied every single message I sent to her. Love had found me, and it was indeed a beautiful thing.

While we were talking the night before her birthday, she asked me where I would take her . I responded by saying it was a surprise. But of course, it was truly a surprise. I was about to take her to Munchy Crunchy, what better surprise could there be? Aside Munchy Crunchy, we had a place where they sold roasted yam and plantain and beans, and we had other local restaurants. There was no way she would like to go to any of those places, Munchy Crunchy was the real deal.

I made sure I was the first to call and text her on her birthday, sweet text messages full of rhymes and romantic lines as you would imagine and she loved it.

Few minutes after I woke up in the morning, she called me and asked where we were going. With a face full of smile and a heart with pride, I said " Munchy Crunchy"

"WHAAAT?" she yelled. "MUNCHY CRUNCHY, THE ONE AT THE BACK GATE?" she continued to yell. At this point, I knew that didn't go down well with her, but why? I wondered.

"Yes" I calmly responded. "You're not serious, is that the surprise?" she angrily questioned. Before I said another word, she continued to rant " see, I told you, I don't do broke guys but you kept disturbing me, now you want to go and embarrass me on my birthday. What happened to Vegas, City chef, Crunches, Natives, and all the other nice places in town, why must you choose to celebrate my birthday in Ikwo"

Well, Ikwo is where AE FUNAI is situated, and this is for people who do not know.

I tried to calmly explain to her that I thought it was better to stay in school, which was why I chose the best place in school, but she wouldn't have any of that explanation. She said I would have to take her to the state capital which honestly, was not far from Ikwo, but was very much far from my pocket.

I had just made up my mind to go to the capital with her it would only cost me the four thousand naira I thought I would save from the initial ten thousand naira I had budgeted.

Then she told me we would be going with four of her friends.

As soon as she said that, my phone went off and didn't come back on until three days time.

Well, don't ask me what happened when my phone came back on because nothing happened, absolutely nothing.

I was not her father and it was not my responsibility to celebrate her birthday for her.

There was no way ten n naira would have been enough for the six of us, and I was not ready to tamper with my school fees anymore. This user ran for his dear life.