ROOM 24, GRACE HOSTEL
Escapades of the lxgents…….
Episode 4
A Madhouse (The return of Daddy)
Madhouse: noun (plural madhouses); A
place exhibiting stereotypical characteristics of an insane asylum…….
An astute definition for this fabled room, exams were drawing near and all
hands were on deck to boost G.P. It was a bleary Saturday morning and I woke to
a scene of wires from laptop chargers crisscrossing over my legs, my head on a
bed, my hands on a drawing board, my torso on the rug and a leg on my head.
I shrug of this foreign leg from my head as I had not gone to sleep with a leg
sprouting from my head, and stand up yawning (without bothering to cover my
mouth) to see papers strewn all over the floor and laptops lying around like
motherless children. This scene was not strange to me as our periodic seizures
of seriousness and Apprehension of Intellectual Decadence (AIDS) was
characterized by this uncultured cacophony of objects.
After prayers and toiletries, the first order of the day was finding something
to eat and this was the most arduous task of all as everyone was too lazy to
cook and then even when a cook was ready, the debate of what to eat usually
took ages (one of the reasons I love home Is that you don’t even need to think
about what to eat). Still on empty stomachs, our debate veers off course
touching irrelevant topics that usually had the ironical ability to bring our neighbours
(who never wake up early) to our room to lecture us about how early it was.
This debate was no different as the irrelevant argument of “Does desire burn?”
took centre stage with me falling back on my literary prowess to support it.
The first neighbour to come calling was Mindy, whose room was directly opposite
ours and happened to be the only female tenant in the hostel (she holds
monopoly on all the guy’s natural generosity towards people of the opposite
sex. Almost everyone finds himself doing her favours).
“PLEASE ITS TOO EARLY FOR THIS…..YOU
GUYS ARE SHOUTING” she said. And indeed we were as we had been carried away by
the argument. So we arrived at an impasse and agreed to disagree and to tackle
the problem of food. It was already 11’o clock by then. Then we heard a
distinctive horn, and we all knew who it was. Daddy had arrived.
Daddy was an elderly man, a little bit on the heavy side (I call it being well
fed) who occasionally stayed at his apartment whenever he was around the school
area. We really didn’t know if he was a lecturer, master’s student or a part
timer. He was the only one capable of instilling the fear of God into our noisy
abode and so we knew that this was gonna be a hard weekend as we just could not
do without the arguments as they were the lifeline of the group.
He came to our room and told us he heard our voices from across the road.
“Young men, he said, I believe you all have exams on Monday but I’ll have you
know you’re not the only students in this compound, so be a little considerate.
Thank you”. The room sank into a feeble silence that I knew was not gonna
survive.
True to this, not long after, the noise started. This time over a girl. Eze was
on his feet profusely sweating probably from the exertion of driving home his
point. “I never said she was fine o, I just said she made sense, that first day
we saw her in statistics class”. “No I saw her before that class near the kiosk
side when you are coming from JAO 3 lecture hall and I pointed her out to
prodigy who said she was okay” Drake insisted. “No pro said she was very fine
oo. I remember that scene very well”. Then I realized that I would be brought
into the argument so I quickly stepped into safe ground saying ‘it’s a lie oo,
I just said she was okay oo”.
“See all of una wan die on top girl wey no even know say una dey exist” Aso said
laughing. ”wait wait what are your points?” I said taking the role of
peacemaker.”
Drake is trying to imply that I was
tripping for T.T ( don’t expect me to put her real name, am not ready to die
yet. But smart pple will get it). WHICH I DEFINITELY AM NOT”. His last
statement coming out in a shout was punctuated by the slamming of the door
whose sound we all knew.
I have never seen people move so fast. Within the time it took for Daddy to
take three steps, Eze was already in the shower, Jboy was deep in prayer, Aso
was repeating constituents of the atmosphere, Drake was engrossed in his
computer. And I was already deep asleep………..
