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It was a Tuesday. I hated Tuesdays, why? Because we had Salman for Civil Litigation. Why did I hate Salman? Maybe because he has the charisma of a potted plant. Why did I hate potted plants? They’re so damn boring. Why did I hate boredom… you know where this is going right?

It was of no added advantage that the place was so frigging hot! A thousand plus bodies with the attendant body heat was no picnic. The man was saying something about “parties to a suit” I was paying no attention. The girl drooling beside me held more interest; the guy in front of me was fiddling with an i-pad the dude to my left was fighting sleep with little success, and the chic in front of me was day dreaming, her eyes seemed glazed. I wonder what she was thinking about.

Just when I was giving up on life, love and salvation… I saw her. Time slowed and then I started to hear those soft rock tones you hear in the movies, like ‘she will be loved’ by Maroon 5 and like things couldn’t get better, she turned her head. It was like slow motion. The movement of her hair, the supremely bored expression on her face, her eyes, her perfect nose, those lips. God she was perfect!!! The temperature in the room dropped and I broke into a cold sweat. A person beside me joked

“You’re really hot aren’t you?” I ignored him, all my attention was focused on the girl I was looking at. How was it possible that I hadn’t noticed her all this time? As if on cue, Salman decided to let us go on break.

She made to get out of her seat. I was transfixed and only noticed Ibrahim, my friend when he snapped his fingers in my face. I looked up, Ibrahim was a friend I made in law school. Our love for the weirder things in life brought us together and since that fateful day when he came up to me and said

“Excuse me, is that automatic me you’re listening to?” We have been inseparable. He noticed my preoccupation and I felt his grin before I saw it. It stretched from ear to ear and he had that glint in his eyes.

“Hmmm, you like the geh abi?” I could only nod,

“Go follow am word now” Um, yeah, about that. I wasn’t very good at that. I was look able I guess, but definitely not dashing, I had a good command of the English language, but not enough to talk a girl’s pants off. So I was pretty much deficient in that area. I had seen friends do it to varying degrees of success. I wasn’t good with rejection. It felt like defeat and most times I’d just crawl into my space and never come out. So… to talk to this, this, this… Goddess. How was I supposed to do it? She was struggling to get out of her row and as each person got up to allow her space, it seemed like a door was slowly closing. Ibrahim had meanwhile told a couple of mere acquaintances of mine my story and they all seemed to be looking at me. She got out of her row and started moving towards the back of the auditorium which was where I had planted myself. It was now or never

‘Okay, this is it, all the rom-coms you’ve watched must not be in vain’ I said to myself under my breath. She got closer and I decided then that I was going to talk to her, so I stood up, planted myself in her path and said

“Hello”

“Hello”

“Um, I’m sorry I hope you don’t think me an absolute klutz for saying, but I’ve spent the better part of 15minutes asking myself how I was going to talk to you”

“Oh really” That sounded sarcastic, this wasn’t good

“I’m Tolu, what’s your name?” The seconds ticked by and it seemed like forever before she said

“Amina” I breathed a sigh of relief, I think she saw it because she sniggered.

“Um, I’m sorry, but would it be totally weird if I got your BB pin?”

“Why would I want to do that?” oh I had to think fast

“Well, everyday of our lives we meet approximately 40-50 people, we’d never see again who may have impacted our lives in one way or another, I’m just taking my chance” seconds ticked by again. I held my breath. 24 had nothing on this kind of suspense.

“Okay, 24A6B55D” it took all of my willpower not to do a tap dance right there, I could shout at the top of my lungs, I did it!

“Um, but I must warn you, I have a boyfriend” She smiled and walked away. My face fell, the girl was mean, getting me to all dizzying heights and then dropping me. I watched her leave. Ooh, I was going to get her, when I was done she wouldn’t know what hit her.

I was growing obsessed with this whole Amina thing. I couldn’t eat…. Who am I kidding, I could eat, if anything, I ate more than usual as I pondered how I was going to get in between Amina and her faceless boyfriend (I always imagined, he had pimples the size of tomatoes on his face and an especially large one on his nose, making him look like the witches we read about in our picture storybooks). I slept, but in uncomfortable fits that usually had me dreaming of me pushing her boyfriend off a cliff and she running to me telling me he was always mean to her anyways and how I had rescued her from a life of misery. So needless to say it was with great joy and gladness that I picked up the phone to receive a call from my uncle.

My uncle was, well… I use eccentric, others say ‘cuckoo’. He was an extremely brilliant scientist (I know right, Nigeria doesn’t have many of those) who was highly celebrated in the area of math and quantum physics and was a lecturer at Stanford university, California, USA, he was extremely wealthy, but never seemed to look the part. My uncle has been known to answer the door naked, he works on most of his equations in the nude and was divorced because his wife commented that she couldn’t share him with his work. He was my father’s younger brother and though my dad said he accepted him for who he was, it was clear that my uncle freaked him out. Avoided by most, rejected by family, he turned to me as his ‘person’. He taught me all the math I know and our love relationship had started since I was six, when he bought me a planetary model for my birthday. I had grinned and asked

“Uncle, what is this”

“The planet earth is round and revolves round the sun along with the other 9 planets”

“Dele, but there are only 9 planets” my dad countered

“O, egbon, just you wait, there’s another one out there, if not more than one”. My dad had laughed then, but was left slack jawed when NASA announced the discovery of a 10th planet.

My uncle had me solve a pretty complex math problem for Christmas

“But, Dele, he is just a child” my mother would say

“Sister, its never too early to start learning your math” was the reply. I from there developed a love for math and my uncle was heartbroken to learn that I was going to study law. He didn’t talk to me for almost a year after that. I got him equation shaped chocolate cookies as bribe before he spoke to me again. This was the first time I would be hearing from him this year.

“Hi uncle”

“If f(x) equals x-4, then (fof)(3) is equals…” without missing a beat, I said

“-5”

“Ah, my boy. I see you’re still sharp. How are you”

“I’m six uncle, I’m just six” this was in reference to the fact that six is a perfect number, so when we wanted to state that we were great, we said we were six. We could use 28,496 and 8128, but that would just be long.

“When are you coming to see your favorite uncle?”

“Oh uncle, real soon”

We said our goodbyes and I promised myself that I would go and see him that weekend. And then this Idea hits me in the face, what if I could travel back in time and alter the circumstances in which Amina met this her Doctor boyfriend, if he did not meet her in the past it is thus unlikely he would be part of her Present...yeah I know, its all wishful thinking. But yet again, no one ever believed it would be possible to communicate with someone that is a million miles away through both audio and video communications. Even Alexander Graham Bell would be pretty impressed but definitely not surprised at the milestone science has achieved over the years. with that thought in mind, I looked forward to seeing my uncle

So when weekend came, I was more than happy to pack my bags and go to my uncle’s house

to be continued...


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