By Vera Chidi-Maha
Last week, I was going through my old collections of CDs and I stumbled into ‘The Night Of A thousand Laughs’ in a mood to relax and amuse myself. I immediately slot in an episode of that comedy.
The first comedian that was featured was Okay Bakassi, a renowned stand-up comedian. After him, came my favourite comedian of all times, ‘I Go Die’ he was indeed hilarious and his jokes simply thrilled me,. There was a particular joke he cracked that really piqued my interest. His joke, if you have been watching him before now, is usually delivered in pidgin English. Hear him: ‘This ladies of nowadays, go dey waste dem time, dem go dey follow all dis car owners. De only tin wey dem go dey get from dese men na only fried rice and ice ream. We wey dey trek; we spend fire’.
Ironically, after watching him for countless times this joke was still able to make me laugh so hard that tears streamed down my eyes. Anyway, it got me wondering. I am aware that most ladies I know and have read of, would rather be seen with a car owner than with a man who has no car. Ideally, when a guy calls you up and asks you out on a date, the girl is not asking for too much if she expects him to come in a car. There is a ‘but’ however. It does not follow that a man without a car cannot say ‘Hi baby, can I come and pick you out on a date? It is not bad, really. The issue here is : who is likely to spend more on the lady?
I can recall my teenage days when a couple of guys in my neighbourhood then who could not afford decent apartments, made sure they had cars. Way back then, I had always wondered why they opted for cars first instead of decent apartments. Was it that the preferred the cars to their comfort at home or was it to impress the ladies? Till date, I still wonder why.
Instead of telling you what I think and know about who spends more on women, I decided to talk to three friends of mine; one of them by the way is still an undergraduate in one of the universities here in Lagos while the other two belong to the working class. Here is what Abosede has to say: “I feel the car owners spend more on their women. The reason is in fact very obvious. The car owners are already up there. If they can afford to buy themselves cars, then they can afford to pick their ladies; bills. What is a lady’s hair-do, shopping, to a car owner?
“Owning a car is not even a child’s play if you look at it. To own a car requires adequate maintenance and depending on the type of brand of car in question, the cost of maintenance varies. For a man to count hundreds of thousands of naira to buy one unit of a car, he must, by my standard, have arrived. I am not really a material girl but, if you present me with both options, I think I will go for a car owner”
Juliet, on her own part, prefers to date the guy on foot. Hear her: “You see, these guys who are car owners can sometimes be full of themselves. Some are very promiscuous in nature and believe they are doing girls a favour by dating them. They feel overconfident. They move straight to the next girl, if the first girl turns them down. They pick any girl that catches their fancy with no control whatsoever.
“Well, I cannot say I know much about their spending habits, but I do know that the car owner I once dated would always tell me how much he spent on fixing one part or the other in his car. In fact, sometimes when he went on and on about his expenses on his car, it bore me to death; but to appear like the nice and understanding lady, I try to pretend to listen to him. He did not spend a quarter of that money on me. When I asked him for shopping money he would always come up with lame excuses like, ‘oh baby, if I had not bought a new engine for my car, if I had not recently done the body work of my car, if I had not refilled the air-condition gas in my car. It is just most frustrating, that I used to wonder if the car was ‘our’ car. Since the car was for him alone, why couldn’t he make provision for my bills as well?
“The most annoying of the lot are the guys using jeeps or SUVs. They see themselves as God’s gifts to women. They stop to pick you up at bus-stops and as soon as they wind down their car windows, they expect you to jump at their offer of a lift. When you do accept their offer and hop into their cars, they immediately give you their cards, and it you are smart, this will tell you that they give same cards to tens and hundreds of girls not minding the scare for STDs.
“The guys on foot value and respect you before even making any sort of pass to you in the first place. They don’t expect you to say ‘yes’ immediately. So, they spend time to woo you thorough and thorough. They remember-to buy you chocolates, bouquets of flowers, cards and so on. They have the time to send you text messages they call you until you say ‘yes’. And when you do, they treat you like a queen. If in the course of your courtship they buy themselves a car, they treat you like you brought them good luck, and they will want to even compensate you by making you their wives. I have seen men who will stumble into fortune while dating a particular girl and claim thereafter that the girl brought them good future. Which car owner wants to know whether you brought the luck or not. They treat ladies like liabilities and not the assets they ever really are.”
Miss Bimbo, an undergraduate, said: “My sister, there is no basis at all for comparison! Hey, so you expect me, a student, to date a fellow student or worse still, a working class with no car? Over my dead body! Who wants to suffer? All the guys I know without cars have absolutely nothing to offer. They will only sweet talk you and have sex with you, but oh, my God, the car owners? They know how to spoil a lady. They can afford to take you to shows, movies, and clubs. They really don’t mind spending on ladies. For instance, a guy who has a Yaris car, a jeep, all in his garage, if you are nice to him and can make him happy, he can even afford to buy you your own car.
“Thanks to the guy I am dating now. He picks all my bills. He comes to campus to pick me up in his car. He loves me, he spoils me silly. We have travelled everywhere together. He is not a fraudster by the way. He is a construction engineer. He was divorced before we met. With the love, attention and money, he is showering on me, I know that since we are both singles, we are, of course, very ready to mingle”.
Well, readers, there you have it, right from the horse’s mouth. Do you have alternative ideas?
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