29 Jan 2025

Letter to February

by Jídé Salawu

In my teenage years in school, circa 2000, nobody would teach you how to get a girlfriend. Learning the romance terrain, the best way to enter into conversation with a girl—these were rites of passage the uninitiated had to navigate alone.

February (not her real name) and I went to the same secondary school in Shao, my hometown. She was a short plump girl in the senior class like me, though I was in the arts department and she, in the commercial. I was also interested in her because we shared the same faith; she was an Adventist, just like me.

I was already something of a ladies’ favorite because I loved books and enjoyed academic topics. You may point to writing composition essays as the genesis of our friendship. But really it was the peer pressures of boys who already had girlfriends in the senior classes that had begun to weigh on me.

When I wrote my love letter to February I summoned up all my manly courage. I began with a contemplation: what would her response be if she were to receive such love news from me? How would the letter meet her? Would she be angry? Would she be eating? Would she be in the midst of other people, even those whom I might not wish to know of my courting her? Would I be response-worthy?

I had imagined that the next day on our trek to school, she might reveal that she had received a love letter from me. Every morning around 7:00 a.m. we took the same route, meandering from my neighbourhood toward the upmarket area where our school was located. I had thought of her mouth shouting and calling out to the class gossips such as Y. and R. who would be enthusiastic in learning about such affairs. It was altogether likely that my proposal of romance would be smoked nicely among all the gossips in the school. During the breakfast or free period when students were meant to study on their own (on account of a shortage of teachers), maybe the whispers would begin.