Though, I could have got more than enough for my bar of chocolates and some other petty goodies but for my newly found desire in latest designs. I could steal to buy new wears. No wonder my pocket-money, plus little more would never be enough. My mom would cry over the phone,
"You this girl! What's your problem with frivolity? You've got enough to wear, why pine away for more? Don't end your life, robbing on the high-way just to buy latest. Be contented, many pray to have just half of what you already acquire."
To me, mom was only being critical. What's wrong with looking latest and good? After all, what one eats and wears is one's own part of one's property. The rest will be enjoyed by those that weren't there when one was suffering to acquire them, when one dies, I thought.
Mom became a little stricter with her money. She decided she would only pay my school fees and give the usual pocket-money. No more extra or additional treats from home. She even did it in a way that she had to meet my part adviser, herself, for the list of books for every semester.
This got me curtailed for a period of time and I would have changed and tamed my roaring desire but for my friends who opened me up to another illicit sources of income. Before then, I had always thought that majority of my friends were from rich homes like mine and that their parents could also endeavour to pamper them like my father did, until I was given the shock of my life. Some even confessed blatantly, without any sense of shame, that their parents were so poor that even the poor called them 'poor'. One of them even said she got to pay her first year fees by selling the only land for the extended family and so she would do whatever it takes to remain on campus.
"Some people call what we do, Aristo; some say na sugar-daddys we dey follow, but we call it 'using what you have to get your bills paid and look latest." one of them said.
I couldn't believe my ears. Wow! These girls have been faking things all this while. So, they actually have been calling those their big-daddys, forming familiarity, as if it was their fathers. Hmmm...what do I do now o?
