Unpopular side with Thomas Oti
Email: thomasoti@qed.ng
When I see a pretty woman, what part of her should I look at? When we were young we were told to be polite and not look adults in the eye. We were told not to look a lady in the eye too. We were told not to stare at a woman’s body as well. We could only look somewhere on her face but not into her eyes. We couldn’t look at her nose either. Nor her lips, her cheeks, her neck or her anywhere. We couldn’t look. We mustn’t look. Damn you if you look. Damn you if you don’t. If you grew up being constantly told not to look at a woman’s face, then how would we not be asking girls Jamb question when we see them?
Leave the face behind for a moment. You can’t look at her body in front either. Boogini?? Totally out of bounds! It is a taboo to look anywhere in that region. Look and you could get a slap in rather extreme cases. Gawk? Salivate? Those were concepts of looking reserved for mags Lolly with its Dauda the Sexy Guy. I mean we read it, we saw it, we lapped it all up in the magazines like that but come the real thing, we dared not raise our heads up to look. Let alone stare. Whether she was your age or older or younger, we grew up having a very healthy fear of girls. Today, given what I now know, that fear was unhealthy.
The midriff was probably safer. But only as long as your eyes do not travel as far as Bermuda. Stay focused on the eternal gap between the breasts and the triangle and you’ll be safe. But you still might get into trouble. Keeping your eyes in one place is going to be hard in some of these instances. Especially when they are barely covered.
But what about the back? Well, that should be safest abi? Actually, it isn’t. There is only one place to look at the back; the bum. Especially if it is well endowed. But growing up, you dare not look. Whose bum are you looking at you perv! You are too young to understand the fuss at some point. And you are too timid to look and dwell when you are no longer too young. You had better not look or you’ll go to hell when you are old enough to appreciate and fantasise. There is always a reason you mustn’t look, stare, think or touch. It was a hard life growing up.
But I am of the opinion that it was all a conspiracy. The older folk did not want us to grow up knowing good things. Television took care of that though. From 4pm every day, we could be transported into the best of foreign and exotic worlds. We could see the world and see how to better behave with the opposite sex. Here we were told they were taboo. TV said they were fun, exciting, interesting, sweet, loving and lovely. We believed the older folk though because they ensured that they drilled their message in with the word of God.
The Old Testament was their favourite tool. There were so many examples of bad behaviour getting punished that the lessons sunk in better than the stories of the incestuous daughter who drugged her father so she could sleep with him. Or the overabundant excess of lust and other exceedingly sexually explicit behaviour that Sodom and Gomorrah represented. We saw the punishment. The punishment, the punishment. Not the sex, sex and sex. We were so gullible. I feel like I should go back and read the story of Sodom and Gomorrah all over again (in the Bible and out of it) and use their pre-modern story of debauchery to do a series called Life in Sodom which would shame Game of Thrones. I still think Sodom and Gomorrah was one of the Bible’s greatest stories sha. Imagine the nerves of the men of the town who stormed Lot’s house and demanded to rape the two “angelic” visitors he had in his home. If it were sweet young virgins who besieged Lot’s door demanding “release” from their virginity from the “angels” by force, that I could live with. And relish the wish I was one of the men!
So, we grew up having a healthy fear of the ladies. And the young ladies who are our ages knew it too. We could barely open our mouth to say anything to them. We had been taught timidity as a life tool. And there was sinister reason. “They” wanted our small girls for themselves. Because we couldn’t talk to the girls without backgrounding it with Simi’s Jamb questions. The older boys had no such need to perambulate. They were wiser, richer, bolder and simply commandeered the loot. We used to totally be in awe! They could sleep with virtually any young lady they wanted. Not by force but by simply sweet talking their way into their pantaloons. The girls had also been taught to steer clear of us small boys but more often than not, they could not resist the sweet mouth of the older boys. We used to envy them o. No hating at all. After all they got all the fine girls. Different shapes, sizes, colours and nationalities. They would fall like the walls of Jericho even before the broses had brought out their weapons of destruction. We admired, ached and prayed that we too should grow up on time and let the small boys see how we would decimate their girls.
We are grown now o and there is nothing to decimate. The world apparently has moved on. Children are born wide eyed nowadays. They grow up with their full wits unlike when us. There is a whole world of difference between those days and now. Then, coca cola was enough. Now? Money, money, money! To get what they used to get for free, you have to pay through your nose and souls. And even after buying airtime like you own MTN; buying iPads like you own apple or mobile phones like your father had shares in Nokia, you still have to be wary of modern day mojo killers like condoms, AIDS, etc. Why are we so blest???
