It's crazy how, if you give people the chance, they would rather treat or define you in their own words. While everyone's entitled to their own thoughts and opinions, everyone is also responsible for the way they carry themselves and what they actually say to others about themselves. Let's travel back in time a bit.
I was a new kid in the school. I hadn't sufficiently learned the culture and all enough to be able to navigate certain situations on my own. I also didn't know all 150 students in the set at that time. All I knew was who I was and the upbringing I had. In short, I was a kind boy, but someone had me resolving to show them another side of me.
One day, a classmate from a different arm of class—say he was in SS1 A and I was in B—came asking for money to borrow in mine. I'm not sure why no one else could or wanted to offer some help, but I did anyway. I took out twenty naira from my own pocket money for the day to lend to this classmate. He was supposed to have returned it before a specific date.
The day to return my money came and nothing happened. The next, the same. Days continue to pass by and I still wasn't getting my money or even hearing anything from the boy. I had to ask him about it, and that was when I realized that he was playing me. Whatever excuse he gave then, it was clear to me that he never intended to return it. "No problem," I said to myself and walked away.
Several weeks passed and we were probably in a new term, and something interesting happened. This same classmate, for whatever reason in this world, was feeling kind of generous or something like that. And then he came into my class asking, "Who wants to borrow money?" Likely waving some cash he had at hand. Without wasting time, I asked to borrow twenty naira. He didn't hesitate and handed it to me, then gave me a deadline to return it. It was an agreement—one that I fully intended to break.
The agreed-upon day finally came and passed, and I didn't return the money. When he eventually remembered that he had some money somewhere that hadn't returned to him, he stormed into my classroom one day during break time and demanded his money. In my mind, I chucked and said, "It's showtime!"
I rhetorically asked him about the same exact money he borrowed from me weeks ago and didn't pay back. It was at this point he knew he had messed up. He couldn't argue or fight back, because just like he played me, what went around from him came back.
Perhaps he was surprised that I could do that, considering that I was a new student, but at least he learned not to mess with me in that way anymore. At the very least to me, I learned to be sharper with my money, but I got justice for this one anyway.
Images in this post belong to me
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