Thank God for Yankee

Every once in a while, I find myself wondering what my life would have been had I not come to America. I attended high school in Lagos and then went to the University of Lagos for a couple of years before finally being 'allowed' by my parents to come and study in the States. The summer before I was due to graduate high school, I visited California and my mom asked me to check out colleges and universities in the area. Naturally, I assumed that as soon as I graduated high school, I would be shipped off to the States without going through the Nigerian university system. Fortunately or unfortunately, that was not to be the case and I went through the obligatory Lag (University of Lagos) experience.

The jury is still out on whether or not that was such a great idea. Maybe not, I'm still not sure. I went to Lag even though I was not accepted into my major at the time (Law). I went to Lag knowing fully well that I would be studying a course I didn't want to study. I went to Lag despite the fact that I was given the opportunity to study Law at another university. I chose to go to Lag because it was considered a fun university and I didn't care enough about my future at the time to do the right thing. I guess that's really mistake #1. Attending college just for the fun of it. Back then, I had a lackadaisical attitude about my studies. I went to class sometimes and didn't go at other times. My natural inclination was to go to class but say a friend came to me on my way to class and said she was going shopping for a party that night; I would opt to go shopping instead. Looking back, I have no idea why I even bothered attending class on a regular basis. I had a friend who did NOT attend one day of class. To this day, I don't know how she graduated. I wasn't that interested in classes but somehow managed to do quite well. I came out top of my class in Year 1 (Sœurs, you know I had to throw that in there) and won the prize for best in my year. Naturally, I didn't attend the ceremony; after all it was for losers. Anyway, that was my life in Lag in my first year. I went to parties and I went to class. By and large, I had a good time and was bored a lot.

Then one fine day, my bestest friend got invited to a Bachelor's Eve and was asked to invite a few of her friends. This was going to be the hottest Bach Eve of the year because at the time it was Nigeria's Number 2 guy's son getting married. Whoa! HUGE! EXCLUSIVE! Anyhow, she got invited by her friend, Alan. Now, no one that we knew was going and certainly no one from our year was invited so this was indeed HUGE. We were both going and out of pity we decided to invite a couple more of our close friends and that was IT. We wanted it to be exclusive so that when gist broke out of who was there, people would hear that a few people from Lag were there making us all the more special. Anyhow, we got dressed and the cars came to pick us up. We were Moremites (the name of our dorm was Moremi Hall) so all the girls sitting in the quadrangle saw us as we were leaving. We couldn't have been happier because there was nothing happening that night, no major club parties or anything so people were really wondering what we were up to since it wasn't anything they had heard about. We trusted that our roommates who saw us leaving and heard us as we were talking about this Bach Eve would also help us spread the gist. The way things were in Moremi, you would know without a doubt when there was a hot party because girls would get dressed and there would be a general buzz going on in the quadrangle at the center of the dorm. On this night, there was no major party so most girls were just sitting around doing nothing.

Anyhow, the Bach Eve was at A Bar and all the young married and unmarried 'big' guys in the gossip magazines were there. My friends and I were giddy with excitement to be in the mix. People came up to us, introduced themselves and we couldn't believe so and so just came to talk to us. It was way cool. Being that we were young and all, we wanted to act mature and look hot so out came the grown up beverages and cigarettes. We acted like we knew what we were doing. Inwardly, we were on cloud nine happy as heck to have been there. However, when one of our friends took off with the groom to be, we were sane enough to scold her for her disappearing act. I landed myself a couple of serious toasters that night. One was Alan; he was a groomsman and invited me to come with him to the wedding. Heck no, so that my face would be all over Newsline with Frank Olize and my parents would see what their daughter was up to? I declined but got his number and another guy's number. Again, I was feeling very hot with myself that older guys were interested in me. A couple of Moremi girls in their fourth year were at the party so we were sure that people would definitely hear our gist back at school. We left the party feeling very good about ourselves.

That experience and what was to follow are reasons I look back and say thank God I was plucked away from that environment before I lost myself totally and irretrievably. I'll probably blog some more about my life before I got it back but this one is long enough as it is.