How I Became The Chairman Of My Ex-Girlfriend’s Wedding Planning Committee

I was the life of the party during my SHS days. I was an athlete—the best athlete of course. I was a dancer too and I was mostly topping my class. Nobody could understand how I was able to combine all these. It made me feel special and feeling special has its own way of making you see life differently. I thought I deserved all the good things in school so I walked around campus with my shoulders high, looking for what I could take and disregarding what didn’t deserve my attention.

The girls loved me. A lot of them gave me a free pass but I ignored them because when I was going to school, my mom warned me about girls; “Sampson fell because of a woman. A lot of talents have been buried prematurely because they followed women. If you want to live long and enjoy life, eschew women. Women are not good, that’s why God didn’t create one for himself.”

I walked around campus with my mother’s warning ringing in my ears so of all the bad things I did on campus, women weren’t one until Anastasia came along. We met at the library and she caught my attention. I couldn’t concentrate. I looked her way at every moment until we looked eyes. She smiled and I smiled back. A little over a minute later, it happened again.

When she packed her books and was leaving, I followed. She said, “Senior Magoo, have you also closed?”

The fact that she knew my name gave me the impetus to push for the love agenda. I told her she was beautiful and wanted to see her again. She told me she sees me around campus every day so it wouldn’t be hard for her to see me again.

We met in the dark and met in the light. We went on food dates and went on library dates. One day she said yes to my proposal and a day later, a guy approached me telling me to stay away from his girlfriend. He was Moses. I knew him very well but we were not friends. I asked, “Who is your girlfriend?” He answered, “Anastasia. I’ve dated her since she was in form one. I’ve seen all the moves you’ve been picking on her lately. Please stop it. She belongs to me.”

I said in my head, “Bra, then it’s too late ooo. This is not the time to back down.” When I had to tell him something I said, “She didn’t tell me she had a boyfriend so if you have any scores to settle, kindly settle it with her.”

I was so confident she was going to choose me when push came to shove so I wasn’t worried. We met in the dark that very day and I asked why she didn’t tell me. She said, “Don’t mind that guy. I left him over a month ago. He’s the one insisting on a comeback but I’m not interested.”

We kissed that day. She was willing to do anything to prove that I was the one she loved. “Sorry Moses,” I said in my head, “The race is not for the swift.”

Moses came at me on different occasions warning me to stay away. He told friends who also came to beg me to leave the girl. The issue even got to one of our teachers who called the two of us and advised us to concentrate on our books. I won. He lost. He was bitter but winners don’t have time to look at those who are jealous so I moved on with Anastasia, loving each other every day until we completed.

Once we were out of the four corners of the campus, everything changed. We tried our best to keep the flame of love burning but we were too too young to win. We didn’t have the capacity to keep love going, looking at our ages at that time. We didn’t live in the same town. Communication wasn’t as easy as it is today so slowly, the distance turned our love to dust until we had no memory of it.

Thirteen years later, we met on our old-school WhatsApp page. I and Moses. It was the talk on the platform for two days. We were both adults and understood life better than we used to. He asked, “After all the rushing, where is she now? What happened to both of you? Did you get married?” I answered, “Life happened but that doesn’t take away the fact that I snatched your girl from you.”

There was an uproar on the page. Obviously, I wasn’t sorry and there was no repentance in my heart. Anastasia wasn’t on the page. Nobody could even trace her whereabouts. We needed her to say something but her voice was missing.

At our first get-together, I went with my girlfriend, Abena. She had a car. I needed a lift so I asked her to go with me. She didn’t know anyone around there so throughout, she was in the corner minding her business. I’d met my mates, some I hadn’t; seen since we completed school. When I met Moses, it was crazy. We teased each other as if we were not the same people who were fighting in school.

When leaving the events ground, Abena said jovially, “I got a boyfriend ooo. He even took my contact.” I was either too drunk or too sleepy to engage but I remember laughing about it and saying something like, “It’s his loss.”

I didn’t see when things started changing. It happened either too quickly or I was too naive to sense the change of temperature in our relationship.

Abena was traveling often because of her job but wherever she went, she told me about it. She stopped talking to me about those trips and stopped communicating. It went on for months but I thought it was just a changing phase until one day she told me, “I don’t think this is working. I want more than you’re currently giving me. Three years later, I still don’t see growth. To me, we should just break up and find the individual paths that would lead us home.”   

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I called for a timeout to talk about what the issues were but she wasn’t ready. She didn’t want to see me and she was constantly traveling so it made it hard for me to get her in her house. I screamed in a text message, “If you’re not ready to meet and talk then  how do we resolve this?” She gave a definite answer, “There’s nothing to resolve. I said it the last time. This is not working. Let’s give it a rest.”

Three-year relationship came to an end without a sound—it happened so quickly and so silently. What hurt the most was the fact that I wasn’t given a chance to make things right.

Now this is where the fun begins—if you’re neutral, it’s fun but to me, it came as a deep shock and almost a deadly blow.

One morning, I woke up and saw our school page buzzing. Over a thousand messages while I was sleeping. “What’s happening? Who is dead? Or there’s a fight going on there?”

I opened the chat and started following the discussion until I got to the bottom of it. It was about Moses. He was getting married and his wedding invitation had been posted in the group. Someone said, “He met the girl at our get-together last year ooo. Heerh boys are wild.”

So I took my time to read what was on the invitation and I saw Abena’s name there. What! Is that a prank? What the hell is going on? When did this happen?”

I called Abena for the first time in a year. I wanted answers. I wanted to know how the whole thing happened but I didn’t get a gist. She didn’t pick up my calls. I sent her a text and up to today, that text had been marked only once. She blocked me.

So I took a trip down memory lane, recalling our time at the get-together and what she told me after the program; “I had a boyfriend ooo. He even took my number.”

I thought I had moved on but this new information brought all the pain back. I called a guy on the page and asked if Moses told him about the girl. He said, “The only thing he said was that he met her at the get-together.”

I should have kept quiet. I guess I needed someone to hear my story so I told him the girl was my girlfriend and I was the one who brought her to the event. I opened up to him in an innocent way but the next thing I knew, my story was on the page.

They all laughed at me and called it a payback time. “You took his girl and he took yours too. It’s a draw.” “This is karma at work. Magoo come and claim your karma.”

I couldn’t stand the joke. It was too much to bear so I left the chat. They put me back in and I left again. I called the admin and warned him not to put me back again. He said, “Where do you think you’re going? When you leave, I will bring you back. You’re the chairman of the wedding planning committee. You can’t leave.”

So I stayed and watched them make a mockery of me until days later, the voices went dead. They were quiet but I still could hear every word they said and every joke they made about me. When it was time for contribution, they called me to pay twice the amount everyone was paying because I was responsible for the wedding. I got used to the jokes. I even laughed at some of them.

One day Moses called. I think it was days before their wedding. He told me, “I didn’t know she came with you. She mentioned your name but we all know you as Magoo so I told her I didn’t know you until we went very far. It wasn’t intentional. I didn’t do it to pay back as others are saying. It happened and I had no control over it.”

We talked for over thirty minutes. His voice was calm. His apology felt very genuine. I congratulated him and told him to congratulate Abena too for me. He asked if I would do that myself and I said, “Not today. I’m fine knowing the truth from you. It’s OK.”

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They are happily married for over two years now but my name never rests on the school page. These guys don’t care about my mental health at all and I don’t blame them. Students don’t mature. Give them a thousand years and they’ll still behave like they used to back in school.

I’ve never talked to Abena but I don’t hate her. She did what makes her happy and I respect that. I believe she hopped on the chance because she didn’t see any readiness in me and that’s alright. Life goes on and it will go on until it gets to my turn. I only have to wait, knowing I can lose some and win some. It’s all part of the game we call life.

—Magoo