Three and A Half Man

His friends started calling him three and a half man when he was eighteen. The name came about as a result of his expression whenever he shared with them the stories of his exploits with the opposite sex. He was a formidable skirt chaser. He would usually boast that it was in his DNA, the ability to attract ladies like flies to honey. He was working at the Nigerian Railway Corporation at the time as a clerk, and the little money he was making at the time was being saved towards his university education. Even then, he still found a way to gather as many ladies as he could into his life.
On weekends, he began receiving female visitors at his one-bedroom apartment by noon, and sometimes he would entertain five different ladies before 10 pm. His main girlfriend, the one he wanted to get married to, would arrive at about 10 pm on Saturday because she would have to travel to see him after her Saturday class at the school of secretarial studies she knew of his exploits ,she would sometimes fight him over it .At some other time, she would even break up with him with the hope that this would change him, but somehow, her resolve would shake, and she would take him back. He was not the most handsome man in the world, but he was going somewhere ,she could see his vision clearly, and she was somehow convinced that he would get there. It was that vision that the other ladies saw, too .It was hard to miss he was like a man from the future .He spoke, acted, moved, talked, and walked like a well-rehearsed success story. She knew love would not be enough to hold on to him .The more successful he became, the higher the probability that he would become bigger than her and they would part ways, this was why she enrolled in the school of Secretarial Studies to learn typing, shorthand, and how to be a good secretary. Her parents couldn't afford to send her to the university, but like him, she was determined to work hard and get her degree. He was just a year older than her .He was forged in the flames of adversity, and this has given him an unshakable determination to succeed she wished she had his sort of conviction, but she didn't she could see only as far as her next assignment and him, but he was seeing the whole world. When he gained admission into the University the following year, she abandoned her studies and fled to Ibadan in pursuit of him .He was shocked to see her at the entrance of his hostel just the day after he resumed school he thought something tragic had happened, but she told him she could not survive without him and had left Lagos behind to elope with him. He would not have it, and he insisted she must go back home to her uncle and aunt, who were raising her at the time .She concluded that he wanted to get rid of her so that he could chase more skirts ,she refused to leave.
The following weekend, she took her back to her uncle's house with the aim of apologizing on her behalf and asking them to take her back, but she had won the battle at that point she had deliberately gotten pregnant for him. She was all of nineteen years old, and the pregnancy was the only way she felt she could hold on to him. When they got to her uncle's house, she broke the news to them, and they insisted that he must take her to see her parents immediately .
He gave her the silent treatment all the way to her parents' house at Ikorodu. Her parents accepted him, prayed for the two of them, and told him he should take care of her. That was their wedding. They settled down somewhere in Agbowo. She had the baby when he got to his second year in the university. She became a full-time housewife. He was meeting more beautiful ladies daily, and they were all more educated and sophisticated than her. One Sunday evening, he sat her down and said, "I will not have an illiterate standing beside me when I get my Ph.D and become the minister for Education of this country. You are still young, and you can still make something of your life instead of sitting idle all day while tending to the house and our baby. It will not be enough for me in the long run. I am saying this for your benefit." She cried bitterly that day. His words sounded in her ears like the prattle of an ingrate. She was his responsibility, his wife. He was supposed to provide for her and their children all his life. She was supposed to be at rest, like all the other married women around her ,why does he always demand more of her? Why does he always sound like he was not satisfied with what she had to offer? What was wrong with homemaking and contentment? He graduated and won a scholarship to study abroad it was a tough decision she knew if she let him go, he might never return to her .The scholarship made room for only one dependent they had a two-year-old daughter. She dropped the baby off with her parents and left for Europe with him .They spent nine years in Europe he got his Ph.D and was offered a job by the university .His dream had come to pass, but the painting on the canvas was not to his liking ,he had always seen himself wearing that academic gown and standing beside a woman who was equally as accomplished as him. He had told his wife this several times he had begged her to improve herself, take up a course, earn a degree, pick up a language, do something she had resisted all his efforts and suggestions ,she told him it was her life, and she was happy with it as it was he must stick with the script. Her father died. they got the telegraph message while they were skiing in the Alps he had a very important lecture to give at MIT at the time, and they made an arrangement for her to fly home immediately to attend the funeral. She was from a muslim background, but they were keeping the dead in the mortuary for her sake .She was her father's first child ,she got to Nigeria and sorted out the funeral and her father's properties with her siblings. Her daughter, whom she left in Nigeria with her mother, was already in secondary school. Life has a way of moving on while leaving the stagnant in one spot! He was gone when she returned to Europe he never returned to Europe from that lecture. He left a note in their apartment asking her to forgive him, but he couldn't stomach being with her anymore. She cried for weeks the more she cried, the more her bills piled up: Electricity, water, gas, plumbing, heater .She had no option but to return to Nigeria. She had lived for love and to love, but her gesture had gone unreciprocated .She didn't fit into his vision. He was supposed to put up with it and man up, but he refused .She returned to Nigeria to start all over at the age of thirty-five. She got a job as a secretary in a radio station, and her daughter finally got to live with her .By this time, he had married another wife in the USA. His new wife was a Ph.D holder in meteorological sciences ,she said he was the one who insisted she must not have another child for him while they were in Europe. She said she tried very hard to get pregnant, but he fought hard against it .She said she should have known at that point that he really didn't love her and was just using her to warm his bed ,he said he refused to be saddled with another child from a woman who wouldn't match his ambition and improve herself. He said his greatest fear was what would happen to her and his children if he somehow died suddenly. She just wanted somebody to feed her and clothe her and earn all the money, while all she did was spend and sleep .He said the more she idled away, the more he realised he did not want to spend forever with her because of how he felt incomplete on the inside .
He said meeting his new wife was not premeditated he was invited to the USA to give a lecture, she was a lecturer in the school, and they went out for coffee after his lecture they got talking, and he was very impressed with her intellectual prowess, so he asked her out on another date. Since he was not legally married to anyone, it was easy to move on from his past. His wife got pregnant as soon as they made love, and in three years, they had three children.
PS: All of them are in their fifties now he and his wife, and three children are in Nigeria for the first time in twenty years to visit relatives and also to see his first daughter again. His first daughter had kept in touch with him and had even spent some summer holidays with him and his new family in the USA in the last few years. She said he had always been a skirt chaser; she was able to keep him in check for some years, but as soon as he travelled without her, he jumped into the first skirt he saw. His new wife said he was the most faithful man in the world she said she had never lost sleep over his fidelity as a husband. He said, "When I was three and a half men, I was searching for something, for someone, and my soul didn't rest, which was why I met so many ladies, but when I finally found the person I was searching for, my soul rested, and I had no need to search any more." Improve on yourself as an individual, update your software, adapt, and grow. It is not enough to get a wife or a husband; the key to keeping that marriage lies in renewing yourself every season. A rolling stone gathers no moss. Always remember this.
-GSW-
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