First hug experience on my last birthday and what it meant to me.

 It's been over two months since my last birthday celebration, and one of the significant thing about my personality is my birth month, specifically the exact date. It happens to be one of my favourite day of the year reason being that it’s always a remarkable day for me and the standard keeps rising beyond bars over the years. 

The truth is I’ve never had a ceremonious Birthday celebration personally, simply put, ever since I’ve been of age. Financially unfits enough to celebrate as I’ve envisaged could be tag as one of the reasons why I’m yet to get an elaborate birthday celebration for myself or I’d hold some other unfathomable factors responsible. This for any reason never truncates the tons of love I get over time. Another significant thing about my birth date is that it rings a bell always in the ears of everyone around me, which makes it quite hard to forget except I as a person skipped your mind, aside that, there’s no hiding place from it because it revolves round me and it’s become a part of my existence.

To bring to light what’s in darkness regards my birth date to those who are already curious and so it doesn’t get the best of them, I’m a February 14 nigga Yuh!, St. Valentine’s Day yunno. I believe everyone one of us know a thing about this very day and its significance to our world. It’s a day widely accepted to show and celebrate LOVE. Even though Love is to be aired every day, still shouldn’t take away the need for a specific day in the year to do beyond the usual show of affection, like going the extra mile.

I got my first hug on my birthday celebration this year 2020 from the unlikeliest, annoying and unprecedented source ever in the whole of the universe. My birthday this year was on a Friday and Fridays are CDS (Community Development Service) days for me and there was no way I could afford to miss that particular day, first, because there was an exchange of Barton from outgoing to intending executives. I have quite a number of good friends I was rooting for as it is customary to have your own favourites when there’s a contest for a position to be determined via voting, for this cause, there is no hide out of this for me, even though deep down, there was a huge reluctance that held me bounded to my bed. There are just days like that when your whole being doesn’t just agree with going out, but here i couldn't succumb to it, so my mind won this battle.

I left home later than the usual time. I was a bit sluggish in my preparations that day and it made time slip off my grip that requires a sudden rush likened a fast and furious car chase in getting things done. I didn’t get bus on time as well despite all my hastiness, so I resolved to an alternative route to just get me going. There’s a fixed fee for late comers which I was dodging from so I resolve to taking keke in place of bus to a particular place called Agip Junction, and then get a bus down to Mile-1 where NYSC Secretariat is and it serves as CDS venue for me.

If you’re familiar with Agip junction, you should know a particular place where some group of people stay with little children I presume to be theirs and all they do is beg and won’t stop at nothing till they shake off something from you most especially the little ones. Well, on this fateful day, looks like I wasn’t getting in any easy with them.

There was this particular girl amidst them I noticed when the keke rider was giving me balance after I’d paid him. My undoing was waiting till I got to that place before making payment and asking for change, well the deed has been done, the way out is the only option now. This girl followed me from there. I tried everything I could to avoid body contact and at the same time chase her off but all to no avail and I was hell bent on not giving in to her request either because the level of entitlement she displayed was beyond me. She’s just a child, you can agree with me, that probably just craves survival or doing the bidding of her parent, who knows. I was not buying all her cock and bull stories even though I couldn’t really put all her utterances together well enough to my understanding, because trying is quite a task compared to debugging a computer program code and there was no need to decipher since all her cravings and ranting inquires “bros drop something for your girl na".

 While we were having our road side small battle, she did the unthinkable and I was stunned. She came to my front at first trying to stop me from moving faster than her and to my bewildering, she hugged me so tightly, the type you don’t even see coming, you can imagine what it was like. And remember I was going for CDS, I was in my khaki trouser and a white top, and if you know how unkempt and dirty those kids can be, I bet the state of my white top should be relative then. At that moment I was clueless, everything happened faster than I had prepared for, even Flash wouldn’t do any better, she let loose of me when a woman around frightened her with a staggering shout that has a hold on me too. Then did she realized she’s committed an abomination and then desist from me to go meet her colleagues.

I was there on my own, short of what exactly to do, I couldn’t go back home to change because I was already out of time and I needed to sort myself asap. My top wasn’t just stained I guess my brain was tampered with as well, because I couldn’t tell why I stood helplessly lost in my own dreamland of choice. After I’d dusted the stain away and it’s not so obvious anymore except you are close enough to notice it. I went back to the junction and called the girl, she was a bit reluctant now not until I brought out money from my pocket then she came around then I gave the money to her. I don’t think there has been any recorded case of Covid-19 here in Nigeria yet as at then, else it would have been another tale of the moonlight, those ones void of a happy ever after ending.

On getting to CDS, it was all light and love that I forgot I had such dreadful experience earlier, maybe giving the girl the money helped shove off my mind the effect. I had to pay for late coming though. I got a couple of hugs too afterwards and number one of it came from the craziest and least expected source one can think of on a significant birthday celebration. I didn’t say much about my birthday to many people aside those who knows already before that day and I left for home immediately after the whole time spent voting, waiting for collation and swearing in of new executives. I was so exhausted afterwards, head back home to get some good sound rest which I'd got eventually. Not to forget, I soaked my white top with hypo on getting home, this is what I do regularly irrespective of who or what I come in contact with.

For every other time I’ve been on that route, I’m always at alert and I don’t leap my eye a second for whatever in this world that's not worth a second gaze at, most especially when those guys are in view. Any time I’m caught off guard from a distance, I give no smiling face from that distance that reads, “Avoid me Pls", I think they get it clean and clear and we’ve been good ever since. I don’t ever want to have this kind of hug as first on my birthday again and again.

This is me again, and here you are with me reading through. I wouldn’t have been much encouraged without your support, thank you and keep them coming please.

Daniel Oladimeji Blessing, Valentine.

DeeVaL.