The name is Gbenga and I will like to share my first
toasting ish with you all. I grew up at a time when technology was not as
advanced as it is today- The GSM, internet and all its components, e-mail,
social networking sites and even dating sites that make meet ups between a guy
and girl so easy, was not available at the time. I wasn’t privileged to have
online interactions in my adolescent years; this was a time when getting
acquainted with a girl was a big issue, it was such a big issue that it was
given a name- Toasting.
I was the type of boy that loved female company from
childhood and interacting with members of the female sex when I was in primary
school wasn’t really an issue. I had
countless female friends in my primary school days and even called some of them
girlfriends in their absence. But the whole game changed the moment I got into
secondary school, I will always say it; puberty is the devil. My first
encounter with this change was in JSS1 when a friend of mine dared to tell his
friends a girl was his girlfriend and the girl got to know, she took offense to it, went ahead to report to
our class teacher and my friend got the trashing of his life. That event
changed the whole game of friendship between male and female for me.
After the above incident, we the JSS1 male members in the
school realized calling a girl your ‘girlfriend’ was a title that wasn’t
achieved easily. We realized for you to call a girl your girlfriend you had to
undergo a ritual called ‘Toasting’ and we got to know this from our school
seniors. Some of us that had school fathers were quickly schooled in the art of
‘toasting’ and it worked quite well, at that stage of our lives some boys had
the privilege of having the prestigious title ‘boyfriends’ before their name.
By the time we were in JSS2, we all knew the importance of
this title, it was such a prestigious title that we all just couldn’t wait to
become someone’s boyfriend. Getting this title was more important than getting
good grades because it improved your social standing in school. My own chase of
the prestigious title started in JSS3; at this time you had the false believe
you were a big boy. I was the type of boy who liked to come to class looking
very stern. I liked keeping to myself and I didn’t like interacting with girls
anymore- I was a toughie or so it seemed. I had a girl in my class, Funke who
was quite popular in our class grade and she had friends from other classes
coming to my class. Amongst such friends was Bukky, a tall, dark , pretty
looking girl. The first time I set my eyes on Bukky I knew I was in trouble
because I just couldn’t keep up with my
stern looks anymore; I had to bury my
face under my desk to hide my blushing smile.
After the first time I saw Bukky, she seemed to have a
pervasive presence. I saw her everywhere I was; all my sisters suddenly had an
imagined semblance with Bukky. Even my light skinned Mum, seemed to have a
close semblance with her. Not seeing
Bukky for a day suddenly became a torture of some sort and as such it wasn’t
long before my friends got to know I was in love. I had to open up to my two
closest friends at the time (Deji and Bojo) that I was in love with her. Deji
being the class captain of his class seemed to have rapport with every girl in
my set, so he offered to help talk to Bukky, but that help was to cost me one
naira every day (Deji claimed he had to
buy her something before telling her my intentions.) most times Deji would come
back with tales like ‘ she has agreed, but she wants you to come meet her
yourself.’ Which of course, meeting her myself was the biggest problem; I called
it ‘mission impossible’.
Every day, I would psyche myself up that I was going to meet
with Bukky and tell her my intentions but my courage always failed me. The
closest I got was buying her ‘tasty time’ and sugar cane. Whenever my friends
asked me if I had approached her, I cooked up lies like I had approached her
but she said we couldn’t talk because she was always around her friends. This
lie had been working for sometime until one fateful day when a mischievous
friend of mine, Ibrahim AKA Burger, heard my conversations and went ahead to
send his younger cousin in a junior class to call Bukky on my behalf. On this
day, it was the closing hours of school and Bukky and friends were outside the
school premises. I was busy bragging to my friends how I would have ‘toasted’
Bukky if her friends were not always around her. I was backing the gate but my
friends had a good view of the gate- suddenly, my friends started telling me
that Bukky had come into the school premises alone and that I should turn back
and see her. This news got me frozen
where I was and my heart kept pounding as if someone was using my heart as a
mortar; I was praying to God not to let it be true but it was true, as I turned
back I saw Bukky approaching and she was
looking for someone- that person was me.
That moment is one I will never forget, I knew I was in deep
shit- how could I toast a girl on a day that wasn’t a toasting day and we
weren’t in a toasting class? (toasting day was that day when a guy looked clean
from head to toe and must have used his Brother’s designers perfume, while
toasting class was the most discreet class where most of us carried out the act
‘toasting’) I summoned courage to go and met her and the following conversation
ensued.
‘What?’ she said
I replied ‘what?’
She said again ‘what?’
‘What is what?’ I replied
She said ‘why are you calling me?’
‘I didn’t call you’ I replied
She turned back and stormed off and my heart seemed to fail
me. I stood where I was for some minutes knowing I had blew my biggest chance
of making an acquaintance with the’ love of my life’ but there was nothing I
could have done to change the way things were. My guys were laughing at me and
I knew this was the beginning of a long ride to hell. I summoned courage and went
back to meet my friends, they made me understand that I shouldn’t have told her
I wasn’t the one calling her and made jokes about the incident.
The next day, the issue was the topic of discussion amongst
Bukky and her friends. Some of my male class mates had already gotten wind of
it too and one of them was Olamide- Olamide , a boy who was half my size and of
course seemed younger than I was, but
was also a class captain and had rapport with girls in my set. Olamide
approached me that day and enquired about what happened the previous day and I
told him all that happened between me and Bukky. He advised I wrote a letter to
her, telling her I was sorry and will see her later after school hours (who was
I to question the wisdom of ‘small but mighty’ Olamide, who already had the
title ‘boyfriend’ to his name) I quickly wrote the letter and Olamide had it
delivered. I am sure Bukky must have waited for over two weeks with the
expectation I would approach her and explain myself but that was too much of a
task for me.
One day, after school hours, I came to my class to pick my
folder and lo and behold, there was Bukky sitting on my desk. First thing that
came to my mind was to run back to where I was coming from but I decided to
brave it. I approached my desk, I asked her to excuse me and I picked up my
folder and left the class. Next thing I had was a long hiss from one of her
friends and she said ‘fool! Does he expect you to wait for him in the toilet?’
at that point I knew I was in deep shit and I was sure Bukky would hate me
forever.
Most of you reading this tale may think it will have a happy
ending. Don’t be too optimistic- after a
while, I got my chance to approach Bukky in a discreet place and this is how it
happened; we usually had this exercise in school called Labor and it entailed
students tidying up the school environment. Most of us didn’t like this
exercise, so most times we hid in abandoned buildings. Unfortunately for me, I
and my friends hid in the same class Bukky and friends did. My friends started putting pressure on me to
go and meet Bukky and before I knew it, her friends also came over and started
mounting pressure. I succumbed and decided to approach Bukky and moved to where
she was, I called her name and she replied.
‘I will slap you if you call my name again!’
My friends and Bukky’s friends were laughing behind me, I
called her name twice again and she gave me the same answer, so I retreated
before she put her words into action. The bad thing about this was, Bukky’s friends
who initially thought I was a toughie saw a side to me they had never been
privileged to see. They laughed in my face like they had never done before and
my friends laughed like crazy too. I and Bukky never dated but I learnt from
that experience and realized my first mistake: I had fallen in love with
someone I couldn’t approach. I realized that if at all you wanted to toast a
girl, it had to be someone you could be friends with and ever since, toasting had
never been such a difficult issue again. After-all, the worst that could happen
was I would get slapped.
That’s my first ‘toasting experience’ I would love to read
yours, send it to africinity@yahoo.com
