EPISODE 29 – ALMOST DOESN’T COUNT (OR DOES IT?)

I’d bet you have heard this line a million times or more. In fact, a female RnB act actually did a song on this sometime ago. Was it Brandy or so? Remind me if you know for sure. Now, imagine a scenario where you are a hundred percent sure you’d get something or reach a particular destination and at the last minute or just when you’re so close, some unfortunate twist of fate spoils everything and renders all your efforts futile. I wonder what could hurt more.

In light of the above, I’m tempted to excite my football senses and those of similar soccer fans (Eddee, what’s up?) and speak on the English Premiership and how Chelsea FC clinched the crown in style last Sunday. Let’s imagine somehow by a twist of fate they had drawn that last match against Wigan. Manchester United who had been so close on their heels, trailing by a single point for a good while would have easily snatched the title on the very last day of the league courtesy of their win over Stoke City. What would we have said then? “Oh, Chelsea almost got the title” but then, they would have settled for a most undeserving second place and all they would have gotten was the sympathy of their fans but not the much deserved title so I want to believe that truly, ‘almost’ doesn’t count. Meanwhile, Barcelona and Real Madrid are in a very similar situation and let’s see if we would have to say ‘almost’ when the Spanish La Liga ends this weekend. Enough of soccer said.

Now, relate this to the a ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire’ Nigerian franchise scenario where the guy on the hot seat is a question away from ten million naira. Okay, let’s be more realistic, say five million. Say what? Yeah, I know some guy won the whole ten million naira once but trust me, such things happen only once in a lifetime so forget that one. Now, our man already has two million naira in the bag courtesy of having answered the 13th question correctly and he is about to answer the 14th question that would fetch him a cool five million and probably take him further closer to the jackpot, and somehow he’s not sure of the answer and has previously used all his life lines. However, he decides to take the gamble, perhaps due to greed or the prompting of what he thinks was the Holy Spirit speaking in his mind. He goes for one of the options and Frank Edoho goes like:
“Is that your final answer?” with that stupid smile he usually has on his face.

Our man ponders for a while, bites his fingers a little, runs the same fingers through his greasy hair and bites them again. Disgusting, right? Yeah, I know but trust me, in the ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire’ hot seat you’d probably do something worse like picking your nose and licking up what comes out of it absent-mindedly.
“I think it’s B but my mind tells me it is C” our man says as though Frank would tell him the answer or the answer would come to him by the verbal expression of his thoughts.
“You have no lifelines left” Frank says, “and if you choose the wrong answer you go back to N250,000. You could walk away with two million.”
Our man wants to walk away but cannot resist the urge of trying. Like hell, five million naira (or ten million for that matter) sounds a whole lot better than two million. Besides, he’s got an inkling; a strong conviction in his spirit that he is going to walk away with ten million naira that day. Have a little faith, brother, he tells himself.
“I’ll go with C” he says in a defiant voice.
“Final answer?” Frank asks.
“Final answer” our man says, his voice not too convincing.

Frank looks at the man and it’s obvious he admires the man’s courage (or stupidity as the case may be) and smiles again. “Mr. Man,” he begins. “Option D was not the correct answer.” He pauses for effect, and then continues. “If you had chosen Option B, you would have been wrong.” The man heaves a deep sigh of relief and mutters an inaudible ‘Thank you Lord’. The members of the audience shift in their seats nervously as though they would have a share of the man’s eventual winnings.

Frank continues “The answer to the question is . . . We’ll now take a commercial break.” Sounds of “Awww” spread through the seated audience and of course the viewers at home. To cut the long story short, the commercial break ends and the show comes back on air only for Frank Edoho to inform the contestant that the correct answer was Option A and not C, thus sending our man falling from a comfortable N2 million to N250,000. WTF! But he almost won N2 million, at least he had gotten to N2 million and could have walked away. Thus, he almost walked away with N2 million but actually left the stage with N250,000. Almost doesn’t count. Now, let’s return to THE GEEBEE CHRONICLES.

By February 2006, BG and I were still involved. I had resolved to push away the idea of finally having sex with her and taking away her virginity. For crying out loud, the thought of it was beginning to make me cringe. I had never slept with a virgin in my previous twenty years and I had previously heard stories that it was a nasty experience and there was always a lot of pain and bloodshed (Pardon me, bleeding) involved and I was one who really hated inflicting pain or the sight of blood for that matter. However, I was sure BG was bound to give in to me sooner or later. That confidence had been further boosted after she had actually offered ‘it’ to me a few months before. I had declined back then because I realized she wanted to give in to me out of fear of losing me and it made me feel selfish. My maturity actually paid of eventually as she finally decided she was ready by February, not on my prompting but of her own volition. I couldn’t have been happier. But one hurdle remained. I had not ever slept with a virgin and thoughts of stories I had heard on the experience made me wish she could get rid of her virginity some other way and come back to serve me the ‘sweeter experience’.

The D-day finally came and we got booked into a small hotel. I felt my house (father’s house actually) would have been the wrong place to carry out such an act and I wanted all the privacy we could get. Simon’s house was an option but BG refused that option. We had all the preliminaries, talked, laughed but when it came down to the real thing, it turned out to be probably the worst ordeal. You don’t need the details but the truth of the matter was, as much as I tried on that day, I could not get in. I was ALMOST THERE! In reminiscence, I probably should have tried some other way (don’t bother asking, pervert! lol) but then, that’s where experience comes in. She could probably have helped matters but she was by far the most inexperienced in such activities and it further stressed her level of innocence, the one thing that continued to get me frustrated and at the same time attracted to her. In the end, we gave up, our clothes soaking wet from the perspiration our bodies had generated in the process of trying to break a ‘virgin wall’.

I realized I would have no choice but to continue waiting for her to be ‘fully’ ready and in the interim, I had a few flings but never intended for any to be overly serious. It was in the process that I met ST, a girl I still remember with a fondness till date.

SEE YOU IN THE NEXT EPISODE OF THE GEEBEE CHRONICLES.