Taking the Breath Away

 When romantics hear phrases like, “he’s breathtaking”, she took his breath away”…, they go like “awwww!” and have this expression that Tom has when he falls in love in Tom and Jerry, you remember right? But those who are not will be like “oh puhlease!”.

             

Well, I have got some proof to show both camps that such phrases do not always indicate positive feelings. Take for instance, the day I took my crush’s breath away. Not with my sexiness, beauty, intelligence or whatever usual “weapon” that is used to rob the opposite sex’s breath. It was the smell of my shit. Pardon my bluntness.
         

   Here is what happened. I was still an undergraduate then living off campus with a roommate. There is this guy that was the friend of one of my neighbors then, and I believed that he is the essence of all that is romantic, my mind shuts down when he is around and I stammer like am a pro at stammering when he addresses me (yeah it is pathetic I know but tell me you have never had a crush in your life ).so the day this happened, my roomie was out on the veranda, and the way our self contained room is structured the toilet’s window was directly opened to the veranda. My crush could not have chosen a worse time to visit. He decided to relax on our veranda directly under the window, at exactly the same time, this extremely stupid, Satan-driven shit decided to come. At first I thought it will just be one lady-like small affair that will not even require an air freshener, men, was I wrong…
             

 At first I was the only one sniffing like “fhun fhun”, I remembered my crush and I quickly stood up to close the louvers. But as the foul business progressed, the smell wiggled and snaked out through every available space without me being aware. The first inkling I had was my crush saying “hey, what’s that smell”. I practically shrank my anus and cursed silently. But have you ever heard of someone stopping an avalanche? The foul-smelling business continued undeterred.
           

  After a while, my crush asked my roomie whom he was gisting talking with “hey, are you sure the smell is not coming from your room?” Instead of my roomie to cover for me, she gave me a practical example of the saying “these girls ain’t loyal” “Oh, it’s mariam. She’s in the toilet” Men! I wanted to die of shame but the fury I felt for that yeye girl revived me. My crush replied “oh man, that’s some shit you got right there mariam” after laughing his heart out. I decided to brave it and after the whole business came out to reply “thank you”.
             

 No matter what I do, my crush will still see me as the girl with the strong shit who starved his lungs of fresh air. As for my roomie… well you know what they do to traitors now…
           

 The second experience I had, I was the one at the receiving end. I had gone to the bank to withdraw some money and this bank (I will not mention the name to protect my tiny hide, but you can guess) is notorious for its slow customer service.
             

   So I was on the queue that day when this man came and stood behind me. The first thing I noticed is that he could give pigs a lesson in being dirty. I shifted forward almost leaning on the soft flesh of the wide woman at my front. That was a huge mistake. He shifted forward and leaned towards me and asked


                        “Sister, na widrawal dem dey do for dis line?”


  My head snapped back reflexively as if I was punched, and I tried to draw in air but it is as if I have been thrown into a room filled with deadly gas. As I was trying valiantly to recover from the foul air coming out of his mouth, he blasted me with another. And another. My eyes watered and my throat suddenly closed. I could feel the foul micro-organisms he spouted getting to work on every available space on my skin they could get to. To make everything much worse, the soft block of flesh at my front practically blocked any air trying to flow to my side. I slid down to the floor and I heard the shout
                       

“hey! Somebody has fainted!”
                 

  Then the unfortunate foul mouthed terrorist whose breath if encapsulated can work faster than cyanide bent down and held me, bellowing in my face
                     

“ sister! Sister!” with each call I slid further into oblivion.

Until one person shouted “move back, move back! She needs fresh air!” and pulled the idiot away from me. I think he said something to another person because I heard someone shout

 “shut up! Your mouth na public toilet!”

Eventually when I felt better and was fully aware of my surroundings, I found out he has left. So you see, breathtaking can be a painful business at times, capable of giving you nightmares.