Oh great, here comes another wedding. Here comes another opportunity for my narrow-minded relatives to torture me with direct and indirect questions about when I’m planning to take ‘the next step.’ The next step can’t be going back to school and doing a Master’s Degree and PhD back to back. No, sir. The next step is marriage and according to their calendars I am long overdue. It’s my life and I could decide to spend it alone but that would be extremely rude, inconsiderate and selfish of me. Who do I think I am, to even think of refusing to replace my name with some man’s name, however dishonorable he or his name might be? I know that Sarah’s mother will be on my neck. “Did you hear? Your cousin Sarah produced another baby.” And it will take a lot of self-control not to hit back with: “Sarah, your daughter, the one who is married to the two-time divorcée? Yes, I heard.” Instead, I will have to smile and say, “Congratulations to her.” Worst of all, I know that I’m surely going to meet that round faced, round-bellied, empty-headed Derrick. He took me on a date one day. We ordered for food and as he ate, you could see that he had scores to settle with the food and the plate. He closed his fist around the fork and punched food from the plate into his mouth. He spoke and laughed with his mouth full. He started sweating. I could understand why. He had won the battle. The fork was now resting and the plate was empty-empty and bruised. I offered my hankie to this victorious soldier. He leaned back in his chair and asked me to marry him. I burst out into uncontrollable fits of laughter. He took offense. Derrick got married a year ago. He was kind enough to send me an invitation. I didn’t attend. That’s probably why he thinks I regret not taking him up on his marriage offer. To be clear, it wasn’t because he was a glutton and I feared that if we got married and one day he came home hungry and there was nothing to eat, he would cut off my arm and cook it. It was because he said that he fears being on a plane because they tend to go beyond the skies. And if one falls out of the plane, one will get stuck on a cloud. And I thought of my poor future children. It didn’t seem morally right to expose them to the risk of inheriting such low intellectual capacity. Then there are those relatives who will put me under their microscope. They will watch and observe me all day. I will feel their eyes piercing my skin. I won’t be allowed to look gloomy because they will take it to mean that I’m sad because I’m not the bride. And I can’t look happy and have fun because I am only trying to cover up my sadness and jealousy. Suffice it to say that this is going to be another wedding where I am miserable, begging the day to end.
