LATER

I love mangoes, I know I make a lot of noise about it sometimes but it can't be helped, I love them. I don't know when I consciously realized I had a special love for them, maybe a few years ago but looking back over the years, I've always had a thing for them. I remember a particular incident with a security guard in secondary school involving mangoes but that's a story for another day (I used to be so annoyed about that incidence but, growth!).

I grew up in Makurdi, Benue State, a beautiful part of Nigeria where I had the luxury of knowing and consuming different kinds of mangoes. There is an abundance of mangoes during the season and you can find some in unexpected places off season (getting a 'houzwa' mango in December will be something!). The amazing thing is the different varieties you find them in, there's a breed that grew right in front of my house, a cross between 'hindi' and 'houzwa', that mango was aweeeesome! The taste so unique and something else! I don't like hindi but I eat it cos it's mango, thanks to this unique blend I didn't mind the hindi taste in it. Sadly, the tree was cut down sometime is 2020.

The assurance of always getting mangoes whenever someone goes out at home during the season is comforting but when mouths are many...yeah, there was a time when our number at home was close to a football team and anything brought in had to be equally shared else those of us at the bottom rung of the food, age, size and struggle pyramid would always miss out. This time was over 20yrs ago (time!).

One of such times mom went out and brought mangoes, one of those smaller varieties that can be very sweet and it was rationed as usual. There's this habit one has as a kid of eating food very slowly and letting the others finish first so you can make them salivate for yours and get them pissed when they finally beg you and you refuse to give them (sometimes you gave of course when a good reason was given and that happened on this day). We were seating outside on the balcony, eating our mangoes from a tray, savoring the yummy sweetness, enjoying this mushy delicacy and I of course was taking my time so I could play that game and so after everyone else was done devouring theirs, I was left to close the chapter.

Such sweet mangoes don't usually come in great bulk so the individual portions always leave you wanting for more hence my sister had to ask for more, but it was mine and mine to keep so why give her when she'd enjoyed hers all alone? I wouldn't give; not without a good reason and my sister had to eat more; not with her mouth still watering for more so we had to come to a consensus: she proposed that she'll get some of mine now and since there was still more where it came from which hadn't been shared, she'll repay me LATER.

But some drama had to happen of course!

I reminded her some minutes later if it was LATER yet and she said no of course, not much time had elapsed. I let some more time pass by and went to remind her of my mangoes that she was to give me LATER, but it still wasn't LATER yet, LATER had to be a LATER time, I began to wonder when the time span would be enough to be gauged as 'later'. I went back again when I deemed it fit that LATER had arrived alas! It still wasn't LATER. When would it be 'later'? I wanted my mangoes but it seemed later had such a wide and relative definition that the time span my sister attributed 'later' to was much more wider than mine. The day passed and another day came and it seemed it wasn't 'later' enough for my sister to repay my mangoes...when would it be later? Days passed into weeks and weeks into months, the mango season went by and I was still booked to get my mangoes at a later time.

I can't say at what point I stopped reminding her of the mangoes which were to be paid at a later date but I know it didn't take me till the season ran out to realize later was a trick of time that would come whenever the other party was willing.

Here I am, grudgingly admitting I was duped. Yeah, that could officially be labeled as one of the first scams I experienced... how innocent life was! I was certainly disappointed (Thank God I've grown to accept that people are unreliable). But elders supposed to show some love and not play such tricks on younger ones, right? You could say they are also in a good position to teach us life lessons practically anyways. The innocent part of me wants to keep guessing she somehow forgot and it faded from her memory... no, she didn't deliberately say I should remind her later just to fool me.

I'm 100% certain she doesn't recall the incident, but for me, it stuck so close and taught me a lesson applicable to all spheres of life: LATER never comes, whatever you have to do, do it now!