Tell Me Your Dreams

 

Bestselling author Janet Evanovich, once wrote that, ‘romances are birthday cakes and life is often peanut butter and jelly. Everyone should have lots of delicious romance lying around for those times when the peanut butter of life gets stuck to the roof of your mouth.’

I remember in my primary school days; I wrote a love letter to my biggest crush at the time. She had the smarts every guy would die for. Easy going and well-spoken. Her skin glowed under sun; she smelled really good. Trust, almost every boy in school drooled over her. she had nice delicious food every time we went out for recess break. I put the love letter in her bag without her knowledge. The following day all the girls in my class were smiling at me. The giggles couldn’t stop; my crush didn’t even dare look in my direction.

At lunch that day, a large crowd of females from my class and other classes, with a few other guys who didn’t have anything better to do than gossip with girls, were gathered in the middle of the school ground. In between the crowd, my crush in a very loud sharp voice was reading my letter to everyone that was gathered there.

Everyone gathered there died of laughter; it was a circus show. I could only watch from a distance; my heart was pounding so fast with embarrassment. I ran back to class to get my backpack and before I left, I located my crushes’ juice bottle. It still had her orange juice in it, and no one was in class at the time. I peed in it, shook it and placed it back where I found it and dodged out of school before it was time. I mean, what would an embarrassed young boy full of guilt and shame do, if not seek out revenge at its earliest opportunity.  

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During my early high school, my classmate introduced me to her home girl she grew up with. It wasn’t a face-to-face introduction; it was a joint conference call among the three of us. I could only hear her voice and wonder if I sound as soft and sweet on phone as she did. I once flirted with the idea of a pen pal when I was much younger. I held that thought for a while and forgot about it and it later manifested itself into a phone pal. Here I was texting and phoning a girl I had never met before; her name was Alice (alias name). We exchanged ideas between each other, she was my inside ‘man’ about girls’ emotional feelings and courtship. We became so close and friendly, it was only right that we met in person, after nearly five months of phone conversations.

Our friendship was open, there was no titles to it. I began to have negative thoughts about myself to say, what if she didn’t find me attractive in person. She just might stop talking to me and I would lose the friendship altogether. Mind you, this was a time period when smart phones were not so common, and so we couldn’t exchange proper detailed pics. I grew fond of her voice and our conversations, the thought of losing her didn’t sit well with me.

We arranged for a meeting one Friday after school, little did I know that she told her friends about the meet and that she had kept them up to date about all our conversations over the past months. Alice and her friends were so eager to meet me up (I didn’t know about her friends), I might have raised their expectations about me too high unknowingly. I sat at a Debonairs pizza outlet with our order ticket in my pocket. A few minutes later, I saw a group of girls all excited, laughing and smiling. All four were still in their St. Mary’s school uniforms.

To my surprise they kept moving closer and closer in my direction until they stood right in front of my table. At that time, my palms were already sweaty, my heart raced at an unimagined rate, I could have been in the Guinness Book of Records for most heart beats in a minute. I mean these girls’ body fragrance was like fresh roses, it was so intimidating.

I kept my cool, stood up and hugged them all like a real gentleman should. None of them introduced themselves by names (I wasn’t too pushy about it), but they did ask for my name to know for sure it was I before they took their seats. I made fun of myself whenever I could, cracked jokes whenever the opening presented itself. It kept them laughing and smiling, after a while three of the four said their goodbyes and left.

It was just me and this one girl left at the table. That was when she introduced herself for the first time in person to me. She looked at me straight in my eyes and smiled, in a very soft sweet voice she said to me, ‘Hi, my name is Alice, nice to finally meet you.’ She had the most welcoming smile I had ever seen, light in complexion, real dark long well combed hair, an oval face with big round cute eyes. Her fingers were short with well-groomed nails.

As cliché as it might sound, she was perfect in her own way. You could almost feel her confidence oozing out of her, it was only then I realized how shy I was sitting in front of her. She took note and made fun of me about it. ‘Not so confident in person huh?’ With such beauty sitting in front of me, I told myself I stood no chance. She seemed comfortable to be around me, we knew so much about each other, it wasn’t hard to find the rapport in person.

One Saturday weekend, Alice came to my home. We were in my bedroom all day eating and laughing at the silly things we did together. I looked at her for a while and then decided to tell her story I would make up at the spot. I decided to use my creative imagination, it left her in awe. Because of the story I told her on that particular day, it changed how I looked at the myself and the possibilities for myself. It was a mirror reflection of my own persistence of how far I had come in life even at a young age, despite of the many roadblocks I had as a young boy.

Alice is married now, with children of her own. We went to the same university; we remained friends throughout. But I guess we not as close as we used to be. I mean she is a married woman now. And as for myself? Well, that is a story for another day.