The aroma of love and semblance of it such as infatuation and co quetry is in the air everywhere. Any wonder Monday, February 14 is Valentine’s Day? It is the day in the Gregorian calendar all sorts of people world-wide declare all sorts of love or request it, or re-affirm it. I am not on the train. For my understanding of love is… doing benefit to him or her. Nevertheless just to test the waters, I teased a 15-year-old girl to be my val! I received a flat and unmistaken no for an answer. And when I asked why, she gave me a small mirror from her school bag. She meant, politely, to tell me that 70 calendar years plus have railroaded me out of the season! I began to write this column on January 9, 2022, ahead of February14, using her as a tour guide into a world I had long exited and almost forgotten about. By 7:35, the baby fat girl, Better Effiong Happiness, my foster daughter, interrupted me, to say I had an urgent message on my telephone.
She read it out:
“Please I just want to hear from you before I die. I am an old man of 92 years,” the message began, indeed with a lot of urgency. “I read Thursday, The Nation Newspaper because of you”.
I called him immediately on 08060755615. He is Pa A. A. Adedigba of Ibadan. The last column he read which prompted his message was… Dementia: Olu Jacobs down, what lessons for us all? of December 30, 2021. Pa Adedigba wanted to know if the column had been published into a book. I told him it had not, that he could read them all in www.olufemikusa.com.That looked like a mount Everest as he wasn’t on WhatsApp, bang “a poor man”typical of her, Better told me afterwards…”I wish I had money”.
That is Better for you, ever so kind irrespective of some of her tempestuous teenage exhibitions which often unsettle her guardians. Deep within her, there is love, that type of love which meets your needs and not necessarily your wants, much of which will be on exhibition on April 14. Before I proceed to the kernel of this column, I will mention two of her kind and love deeds which touched my heart.
One day, I sent her to purchase something for me in a nearby store. It was quite a load she couldn’t push home in a cart by herself. She asked one of the young workers there to help her. He said he had not had breakfast and had no energy. His pay could not support him, and he did not help himself with company resources as the other fellows were doing to raise their heads above water. Better gave him N200 and, right there, a true friendship began. Near our house were two girls aged eight and 16. They are two of the four children of a welder I’d known for about 15 years. Their mother had left their father. The two girls always sighted her passing by their house on her way to school. On her way from school one day, the two girls pleaded for some money for food. They had not eaten all day, they said. Better had no money on her. But she felt like helping. So, she approached a gentleman who stood in front of an office near the residence of the girls with a plea that he give each of the girls N500. The man asked no questions and obeyed. The girls thanked him, ate, became his friends as well as Better’s. I wasn’t surprised that Better turned down my Valentine request. She is an out-door person with friends almost everywhere she goes, whereas every other member of the household is an indoor person. She wants to “catch fun”, but we fear for her. She wants to bring her friends home. But we say “books first”. She says we are bottling her up and that the house, like us is “boring”. I do not have biological daughters, so my understanding of teenage girls is limited to my teen years about 50 years ago. But my spiritual understanding of the conception Child kept pulling me by the shirt collar, admonishing me to be her friend and not her Intimidator and/or Inquisitor. Intimation and Inquisition are two of the four Human Dramas through which we humans impact one another to subdue the weak one, steal his or her psychic energy to grow ours, leaving the assaulted person devitalised and conquered.James Redfield postulated ideas of The Four Human Dramas in his celebrated book, Celestine Prophecy.
As I stated, the words which ring out during Baby Blessings where I worship keep ringing in my ears. The child is not the property of his or her parents but “A Gift To The Right Mother” who is to be a “faithful guardian” of his or her paths. A child has not come to the Earth for the first time. In many cases, children may be older human spirits than their parents. They are merely old ones in young bodies in a new earthly environment through which they are to be guided until they are able to safely navigate their paths. Gibran, author of The Prophet, says it another way when he likens children to Arrows we fire from a Bow. This shows they are distinct personalities on their own merely trained and guided by us until they can fly on their own. The fired arrow never returned to the bow. Every child has a purpose for being on Earth which may be different from the parents’. In my time as a child, it was much difficult as it is today to tear away from the family bond and bondage for self expression and fufillment outside the fold. School cartels, sex cartels, sex education at school, consuming social media and mainstream media have all conspired to take the child out of the control of the parents. Thus, a parent who would be like a “faithful guardian ” of the paths of a child must first learn to think like the modern child, understand his or her ways to make safe passages out of today’s thicket of thorns in which young people are growing.
We are back to Better Effiong Happiness and 2022 Valentine’s Day. Her father and mother departed in their thirties. At 71, I am standing as a father, grateful to the Most High for the priviledge of being a guardian to this unique human soul. I have begun, through her , to learn the vocabulary of the modern teenager. Every parent should do this , in my view. For the language is what we adults or the children are. It is like the food we eat. We cannot flee from our shadows. We are our language. We brought it about. We are it.
Teenage Slangs
Which generation does not have its own slangs? I remember my grandmother always falling into depression whenever I was going to a party and I told her Mo Nlo J’Ebo(I am going to eat sacrifice!)Ebo was my generation’s slang for a party. We did not know the effects of words which our tongues rolled out. Better Effiong Happiness taught me today,’s slang such as Bestie. A Bestie is a special friend one can share one’s innermost secrets with. Parents have become distant persons. The Bestie is one’s collar bones. Boys and boys and girls and girls do “Besties”. But boy and girl besties are the commonest. There is school bestie, street bestie, neighbourhood bestie. There are two basic types of besties…the non benefit bestie and the benefit bestie.
The bestie benefits may or may not date. Many do not date. The benefit in the bestie is that if the girlfriend of a party is not available for sex, he can ask his girl bestie benefit and she would be obliged to give him. She, too, can likewise ask him for sex. Dating teenagers always let their partners know that they have Bestie Benefis so that sex leaks do not cause trouble. The bestie is a social cult which has engulfed the teenage generation.
Joy Giver
The rule of the game here is that, however angry or saddened someone else must have made you, you must smile and be happy in the presence of your Joy Giver. Sometimes, teenagers saddened by strictures at home sneak out to their Joy Givers to regain their balance. They may stop over on the way from school if they are day students Both may go on joy trips. It would not matter if school bags are searched to prevent them from taking home clothes to school. They can always borrow a home dress from a friend or from a friend’s friend. And there will always be an explanation for coming home late from school.
Miamor
This is a person who offers protection against all sort of vicissitudes…other boys, financial challenges etc. Imagine that your daughter comes home late from school, too late for comfort and, angrily , you ordered her back to where she was coming from! What is a mi amor for? She may have not only broad and muscular shoulders to cry on but a cosy bed as well for the night or until the coast is clear at home!
Other Half
This is expected to be a relationship with prospects of growing towards marriage
Best Bite
This person has a high opinion of you, hardly sees your faults, and says only good things about you to everyone everywhere.
Butter Biscuit
Many girls do not like this fellow. He is thought to be too soft for the male figure they desire.
Cuddle Cakes
This is a boy or a girl his or her partner enjoys cuddling with. This is different from Cuddly Bear, which is a person with a bigger frame, a feature which makes cuddling more exciting to some girls.
Candy Lips
He is liked because he is a terrific kisser. In my teenage years, my generation adored a bit music entitled: Lucky Lips by Cliff Richard who said “lucky lips are always kissing, lucky lips are never blue”…It amazes me that people are still kissing these days of HIV and COVID-19.
Street Auntie
A double edged sword, this is often a single , grown role model woman for teenage girls. Her dressing is upbeat and her mannerisms may be foreign. Sometimes, she has money to throw around. She may be a work class or hook up woman. As a hook up woman, she probably lives alone in her apartment, the rent paid by men in her life. There is no way her street nieces would not pick up some of her nuances, which may include lesbianism, as is often reported. This is why mothers need to pay serious attention to the women their daughters interface with. The lives of young girls are not necessarily protected by older women in the street than they are by street uncle’s.
Street Uncle
Many young girls are money lovers and status concious too early in life . They flaunted Black Berry phones when this brand was the Vogue but their parents could not afford it. Now, there is a new song…I Phone. Many parents do not ask how their sons and daughters in high school come by phones which cost as much as N100,000 a piece. The girls exchange their bodies for it. So do the boys if they fall into the hands of gay street uncles. It is incorrect to assume that the horizon of the Junior or Senior high school girl today in respect of the street uncle is limited to three school drop outs who found their ways into “hand work” such as painting, tiling, bricklaying, air conditioner and generator repairs, electricity fixing and plumbing. They come to puberty much earlier these days, are more wordly wise than their mothers and prefer men of whatever age who can pick their bills.
Street Mother
She is a mother role model for the street daughters.The term ‘street’ here and elsewhere in the teenager’s vocabulary is not necessarily a dirty, negative word. It refers to not the ghetto or to the slum and their nuances. The street means anywhere outside one’s own home. Thus, a girl who lives in Banana Island may have a street mother or friend. The hazard in the street mother for a girl as well as for her biological mother is that someone else is sharing with the biological mother the duties of bringing up the girl. A child is a gift to the right mother who is to be a faithful guardian of her paths. She has to learn to combine these traits with friendship with her daughter to not lose her to the street mother. Friendly mothers are playing, listening mothers. Teenage people are still in the Sanguine and early melancholy age brackets. The first of her seven years were spent in groundedness, when they were showered with love by their parents to make them feel self confident or inwardly secure. The next seven years (age 8 to 15) features development of the sexual characteristics. Puberty sets in . Boys wish to grow tall and muscular and be a hit with girls. The girls wish to have big breasts and buttocks, both instruments of coquetry among women. They want special clothes, shoes and bags. They are now moving away from him shorts, which caused terrible crisis in many homes to Big Shows. The big show is an oversize polo top which may cover up to the mid thigh or the knee. The show is that there is no knicker or bum short under it. There is only a panty or non at all. school still does not permit outlandish hairstyles. But they are mindful of quality skin complexion and texture and facial looks. They are ready to take on men of any age. If they cannot discuss their sexual experiences or the men who talk to them with their biological mothers who still see them as hardly out of the womb, the street mother will give them listening ears . But who are these street mothers? They may be fickle women on the broad way. Lucky is that baby girl whose street mother is an upswinging or upward looking woman who can lead her aright as though she is her own child sent to her. The conceptions existence of the street mother should challenge all biological mothers to deepen their understanding of the real and true meaning of “Mother” and “The Child”.
Street Daddy
When a parent hear that his or her daughter has a street daddy, the tendency is to assume that he is a man who honours fatherhood. These girls are smart they have merely replace the Sugar Daddy of old for Street Daddy. The sugar father lavishes money on his sugar daughter in exchange for her body. It was a mutually benefitting symbiotic exchange for both parties. The girl had financial leverage into an upland world her income capacity could not take her. The ebbing street daddy received a second wind for his life through renewal of his animistic energy. It was a demand and supply market deal. So it still is today in the age of the street daddy.
Conclusion
Mothers and daddies, we cannot exhaust the lexicon. You can expand the database by paying more attention to the conversations of your teenage children and those in their 20s. By their 30s, when they should have graduated from melancholia into choleric age, pursuing bread and butter for their estate in life, they should have simmered in that new season or become softened by it. Didn’t all of us? The long and short or the bottom line, as we say, Who is your daughter going out with on Monday, February 14, Valentine’s Day 2022? Her boyfriend, Bestie, Bestie with Benefit, Street Friend, Street Daddy, Street Uncle… who? And how much of her coded language can you decode?
When my girl would not tell me how February 14 will be like, I teased her that she will not go to school that day. She fired back that she will then know she lives in a prison. When I reminded her of the various outdoor activities I oblige her, she agreed the house was not a prison but a mini-prison. I look forward to February 14, trusting that she will tell me how it goes.
