Talebearing24- Obedience is better than sacrifice.

I am in confusion and misery right now as I write this story. Will my father ever find a place in his heart to forgive me? I said this because I have offended my father so greatly that it will take a lot of effort to get his forgiveness. I am twenty-five years old. I took a decision some years ago and now I live to regret it. I will live to curse the day I met Kingsley, the man who ruined my life. I come from a very good Christian family, a God-fearing one. I am the only child and daughter of my parents. Though we were not very wealthy, we were comfortable and morally upright. I had brought shame and disgrace to them with my actions that I now regret. If only I could turn back the hands of the clock. I would do things differently. I had just left secondary school at a tender age of seventeen and my parents were proud of me. They wanted me to go to a higher institution of learning and thereafter, live a good life. This was the dream my father had for me since I was a kid and now, he was ready to make it a reality. When I was about entering the university, my father would always advise me to be a good girl. It was around this time I lost my mother. It was so painful but I had to live with the reality of life. My dad saw that he did everything he could to make me realize and actualize my mother’s wish that I should get married in the church. This was what I had in mind until I met Kingsley. I was still in the university, one fateful morning when I met Kingsley. I was waiting for a taxi on this day when a car stopped beside me and I bent to see if the driver of the vehicle was someone I knew. To my surprise, I saw a very handsome young man smiling at me. His smile was so captivating that I fell in love with him immediately as if I was charmed. Then he said ‘’Hello’’ to me and I was lost in the beauty of his deep voice. My knees became weak and I would have fallen if the car was not beside me to lean on. He told me his name was Kingsley and he was ready to give me a ride to wherever I was going. I didn’t even object. I just got into the car and he started driving. That same day, I ended up in bed with him. I fell head over heels in love with him. For me there was no looking back. I totally forgot all the advice my father gave me and my dreams of becoming a successful woman in life. My father soon noticed that I had changed as I acted absent-mindedly at home. To cut the long story short, I soon found out that I was pregnant and Kingsley was responsible. I was shocked by the way Kingsley behaved when I told him this. He called me ‘’a lying bitch’’ and that I should look for the father of the ‘’bastard’’ I was carrying. He also told me that he was married to a woman who was living in the United States of America with three kids. After that, he slammed the door on me. I could not face my father now and presently, I am squatting with a friend of mine and I am eight month pregnant expecting to put to bed very soon. Anytime I think of the advice my father gave me and all his care and love, I regret my actions which brought shame and disgrace to him. I wish I had listened to him.

Talebearing24- Strike while the Iron is hot

Pa Chima did not stop telling people, who cared to listen to him, about the need to make good use of any favourable occasion without losing valuable time. People living around him wondered why he remained in abject poverty without any breakthrough. In most cases, he would go on memory lane to remember his past of wasted opportunities and tell his neighbours, especially the youths, mainly out of self-pity, to make good use of favourable occasions as soon as they come Pa Chima, as he was fondly referred to, was a man of seventy-two years of age. He was lonely as nobody knew his wife and children. He was born in the palace of a king who was his father. Though he was brought up in the palace of a king, his old age was spent in penury and abject poverty. Though Pa Chima could be said to have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, his parents were not the doting type, they were strict and ready to send him to school. He attended primary and secondary schools in the country and he was later sent abroad, on his insistence, to study. When he got there, he felt that he had escaped from the strict control of his parents and he could do anything he wanted. He started to live a wayward life involving himself in gambling, immorality and other social vices. Most times, he would be arrested by the London police for night crawling but he would be let off the hook because his father was known to be influential. Meanwhile, he had dropped out of school and concealed this fact from his parents. It got to a time, his father contemplated bringing him back home but his mother prevailed on him not to do so. After living in London for ten years, Pa Chima was deported home after he had been arrested for raping, charged to court and found guilty of the offence. He was deported without achieving anything and he could not account for his stay abroad. When he arrived the country, his parents pardoned him and encouraged him to settle down by giving him money to start a business of his own. He told them that he would go into the business of selling American photocopying machines and his parents gave him two million naira to start the business. However, Pa Chima didn’t learn from his past mistakes as he continued his wayward and wanton ways of life. He wasted the money and after some months, he could not account for the money. Meanwhile, his brothers and sisters were doing well and his parents thought that they should not give up on him so that he would not become a liability on his brothers and sisters. They got him a wife and so after he had his own family, they thought that being a family man would help him out of his wanton living. They set him up in a business again with a large sum of money which he wasted. It was at this point in his life that his father died and soon after he lost his mother in a fatal accident. His brothers and sisters neglected him and when things were rough with him; his wife abandoned him and took away his children. He had since then become a lonely man, a failure who found solace only in telling people who cared to listen to the story of his life and urged them not to live a life of wasted opportunities as he had lived but strike while the iron is hot.