I like it when it rains. There is just something about a downpour, it gives me a sense of renewal and freshness. In the past, I would spend several minutes playing in the rain until my mother would come home and give me a severe toungue lashing "do you want to catch pneumonia?!" She would ask incredulously. I didn't care. I often felt like her scolding was a small price to pay for the exhilaration I got from being in the rain. Now I don't play in the rain anymore, I find myself wishing I could but I have to accept that the chapter in my life is closed and settle for appreciating the beauty of rainfall from my window pane. The thought of old age is distressing. I will never be fourteen again, I will never know that kind of freedom ever again. I am closer now to being a parent who would reprimand my child if I ever caught him in the rain. I can imagine myself giving him or her a lecture on the dangers of playing in the rain but I sure hope he defies me and does it anyway. Youth is treasure, don't waste it.
Whenever I use the public transport system in this town I always get a story. It's because the public transportation allows one to interact with the society and feel it's pulse in a way that is almost impossible from the comfort of a private vehicle. So yesterday I got off a bus at Julius Berger round about at around 5pm, rush hour. Naturally there was a fair amount of traffic, pedestrian and vehicular. I had just arrived in the city from my outpost in Gwagwalada and I was hurrying to get in a cab and out of the blistering sun. That was when I saw something that made me stop. There was a crippled man along the sidewalk. His limbs were shrunk and shriveled and he could only manage to drag his malnourished body along the curb using his forearm while accepting alms from motorists and passersby who threw their loose change in his direction. He looked very exhausted and he had his hands full but every time a note was thrown out of a moving car or dropped by a pedestrian he would ...
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