Am sitting down in retrospect and am thinking about some of the very funny things we all do for love, most times in desperate moves to get love by all means and am having a good laugh at myself.
Today is one of those days that I wake up and everything around me just makes me happy.
On a day like this, it is just impossible for me to get angry or sad.
My wife knows when I have such days and that is when she asks me to bring down heaven to earth for her.
Women and their funny ways of sniffing out the best time to attack.
Even the mishaps I have had in the past are being remembered and am trying to fight back being a moron with laughter.
Thank God am home alone so nobody is here to ask me some insanity questions.
I have just been laughing.
And I hear laughter is good for my soul so am letting myself go.
A whole lot of the dramas I have had about love have been coming into my head but there is this particular one that won't just let me stop laughing.
I can't imagine I ever did that.
How more desperate can one be for love? It's so funny how we can lose our minds when we are in love.
When I was growing up, I wasn't what you would call a womaniser.
I was somewhat of a geek but I had my own way with women that was equally very effective.
I had a way of wooing them and making them fall in love with me.
My system worked so well that people rarely noticed the geek part of me except for those that were very close to me.
They actually knew the bookworm side of me but others saw me differently.
I was what I would call a good blend of the geek and social type.
I was both to a lot of people depending on how close you were to me.
It was fun being different things to different people and I was enjoying my escapades with the girls.
I also had a way of really checking my emotional involvement with the girls.
I had the rules all written down in my head and I was following them to the letter.
I didn't quite have a lot of girls but the ones I had were really giving me a lot of fun.
I was calling the shots of when I wanted to quit.
I made sure I never really got emotionally involved and it was working perfectly.
And then things got real funny.
Of all the girls, I noticed I was becoming fonder of one particular one and without noticing it, she was picking on my emotions.
I would stay awake all night just wanting to talk to her.
And any day I did not succeed I felt very terrible the next day.
It was always obvious something was not right with me.
I always wanted to be with her and I was getting increasingly sacrificial with her.
I would go with her on errands.
I would brag about her to my friends.
Simply put I was falling in love.
I was working against my rules and I was not even noticing.
It was fun because she was equally responding well.
She loved spending time with me and would jump at the opportunity of telling her friends about me.
We were two love birds and the feeling was beautiful.
For the first time in my life I was in love and I was enjoying every bit of it.
I kept telling myself that if I knew love was this sweet I would have fallen in love with someone since.
Was I right? I wished I was because I didn't know that all that was about to change.
Without warning and for no explainable reason, she started avoiding me.
She was no longer enjoying our love talks in the night.
She kept getting irritated by the jokes she would normally enjoy from me.
She would not come out of their house if she knew I was around.
The more I tried to make things right the worse things would get.
What could have happened? I was asking questions and not getting the right answers until one of her friends dropped the bomb shell.
There is a new guy in town from a wealthy home that she is seeing now!!! It's a lie.
It can't be true.
Tell me you are lying.
How could she possibly do that? Are you sure? When? How? Who? How come? Are you sure? Have you seen them with your eyes? The frenzy had started.
I was going paranoid.
My mind was going off.
Everything went blank.
There was an instant replay in my head of all the fun the boy would start enjoying now.
Fun I used to enjoy at will.
Now it belongs to one naughty "hopeless" boy whose only visa to my girlfriend is that he is from a wealthy home.
How could that be? For the first time a woman was shaking me off my feet.
What followed next still makes me laugh up till today.
I was just too young and inexperienced and I acted it out.
It was a contest.
Yes, it had to be.
How could I possibly let my love walk away without a fight? I had to go get her back.
First of all, for no fault of his, the boy became my instant enemy.
I loathed him with all the passion I could gather.
Funny enough I had not even seen this guy.
He has used his father's "ill gotten" wealth to confuse my girl friend.
It must be his fault.
It could not have been the girl's fault.
She loved me and could never have thought of dumping me if that guy didn't confuse her.
He is a bad boy.
Of course he had to be.
How could I possibly see anything good in him? He represented agony to me.
For taking my girlfriend away he was my enemy.
Why her of all the girls in the neighbourhood? Is it because his father is wealthy? Who told him I have not been taking care of the girl? Can he love her as much as I did? I must show him who is king in this neighbourhood.
I don't care if his father has money or not.
Me, I have my group and I would unleash them on him.
Let's see who wins.
To me I had the biggest battle of my life and I needed to plan carefully.
Meanwhile this boy I was killing myself over did not even know I existed.
He was busy with his new catch and was having all the fun in this world and here I was planning all the revenge tactics in my head.
I first had to start with cooking up bad stories about the boy and letting my girl friend know how bad the boy was.
My boys were to be the rumour careers and they did a very good job about it.
But it was having the opposite effect.
Instead of scaring the girl away, they were falling more and more in love.
The stories looked like they helped to nourish the relationship the more.
I was losing the battle.
I had to re-strategise.
The first one didn't work.
Next I had my friends walk up to the boy to tell him to either leave the girl or face the wrath of the "big boys" in the area.
Big boys indeed.
My name was not mentioned but he was told that one of the controllers of the area was interested in the girl and wanted him to stay away.
He didn't just understand them and he continued enjoying himself.
When the news got to the girl, she knew instantly that it was me and that made her hate me the more.
I was harassing the love of her.
Any woman would hate for that.
She was loving the guy the more and was hating me.
I was losing the battle.
Plan B had flopped again.
At this point she already knew it was me doing all that so there was no need hiding again.
And I could not stand the sight of the boy parading her around.
I needed to do something fast.
It was time for open confrontation.
Funny enough I chose the very wrong time; when he was with the girl.
In my mind, I needed to wash him down properly in front of the girl to prove to the girl that I was still in charge.
Very funny.
I wish I had not woken up that day.
The scene of what followed haunted me for a very long time.
I had rehearsed the wash down properly.
I had put finishing touches to the loose ends and it was show time.
I had spotted the two of them and I walked up to the boy with my shoulders all squared up.
I started rattling.
He just stood there and was looking at me speechless.
The next thing I knew, without warning he landed one very hot sweet delicious slap on my face.
It must be the worst I have been slapped all my life.
I was still trying to pick myself from the slap, the next thing blows followed.
And then kicks.
He was now being the king of the area.
In summary, I was given the bashing of my life.
Right in front of the girl I wanted to prove to that I was a man.
Am sure you can imagine what happened to my reputation in the area.
I must have disappeared back to my house because I can not remember how I got home that day.
I lost the girl forever.
Though I and the boy later became very good friends, the event of that day lived with me for a very long time.
Now it provides me with a reason to laugh.
I was just too young and heavily inexperienced but it all adds up to making life beautiful.
The above is a true life story and it is told for your enjoyment.
Hope it made you laugh just as I am laughing.
In fact I have been laughing uncontrollably here and I hope it has the same effect on you.
Please let me know how much you enjoyed the story.
You can leave a comment to tell me the effect the story had on you.
With Love Uchenna Flanagan Igboanugo