I’ve been a part of experiences that the mere thought of them, causes me to shiver at how naive I was at the time. This story I’m about to narrate, is one of those experiences.
For the longest time, I always found it hard refusing people. Putting me in a situation where I’d have to say no to someone, was a clear sign that you didn’t have my best interests at heart because I was definitely going to fail. I knew there’s nothing they would have done to me, if I had refused but perhaps it’s because I wanted to be liked so much, that caused me to always agree to requests, whether it pleased me or not.
So, while in the university, I reside in a hostel on campus, and because of the population of students usually living in the hostel, it’s the perfect location for anyone who is scouting for people to attend events, church Programmes and all. That particular time, it seemed as if almost everyone was doing one church activity or the other, and the hostel was the best place for them to advertise. They’d go from room to room, inviting people.
That day, it was the d-day of an event they had been coming over to our rooms to announce, one I’d already made up my mind not to attend. So, it was time for the event, the lady did rounds like three times, informing everyone that buses were available to transport everyone to the location. We were just two in my room that day, other roommates were out. So, we didn’t even get the chance to refuse because there was no crowd to hide under.
This lady came to the room, countless times, wanting to ensure we were getting ready. At first, we stalled, telling her we needed to loose our hairs. We did that, finished it and continued using our phones, when this lady came back again. She kept coming back after every flimsy excuse we gave her, and because we didn’t want to hurt her feelings, or discourage her, we could say no outrightly.
She soon noticed we were stalling, and rather than leave us be, like her partners had done, she decided to sit out our preparations with us. She waited, while we forced ourselves to got dressed, thinking she’ll be fooled by our facade of preparations. She wasn’t fooled. We had to dress up, and make our way out of the hostel. On our way to where the buses were parked, she stopped to buy something. That was our chance, and we grabbed it with both hands.
We continued walking straight ahead, walked past the buses waiting to transport and continued heading to the market we’d planned to go before. It wasn’t time for us to go, but because we couldn’t say no, we had no choice but to go at that time. Everytime I remember that experience, I cover my face in shame, because that was a very easy problem we could have resolved by simply letting the lady know we weren’t interested: Remembering this makes me smile as much as it makes me cringe. I’m glad I know better now.
It’s currently 12 minutes past 12, and what better way to get rid of all the day stress, than to share a funny story?
Thanks for reading. Image above was taken by me.