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CULTISM (part 1)

“Do you, Nathaniel Lawson, take Juliet Cookey to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do you part?
I looked in to her eyes again and I felt a thousand butterflies fill my stomach. I made it! Here I am, standing at the altar with the woman of my dreams, my better half, my life partner, my twin. I’m getting married to Juliet, my crush for over three years! And in those brief seconds, my mind went down memory lane.
I met Juliet during my NYSC days at Asaba. Ours was not the typical “love at first sight” thing. On my way home from work one day, a fight broke out in the bus I boarded between the conductor and one of the passengers; an elderly man who couldn’t pay his fare becaus
e he had forgotten his wallet where he was coming from. He was pleading with the conductor to pardon him. Trust these agberos. It was like pouring water on zuma rock. “Oga me and you go die here o. You wan use my head abi? You no reach”. Hearing the rough looking teenager say those words to a 60- something year old man made my stomach churn. All the other passengers tried to plead on the elderly man’s behalf but it all fell on deaf ears. “Conductor how much be your money?” the voice came from one of the passenger sitting on the fourth row. We all turned to see the owner of the enchanting voice and it turned out to be a young lady in her mid-twenties. She wasn’t the type you would call very beautiful, and at the same time, she wasn’t plain. She was somewhere in-between. “Na N350”. The lady simply put her hands into her bag and retrieved a N1,000 note for herself and the elderly man. This single act drew me to her.
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