Several moons back an acquaintance who thought highly of himself and wasted no time to blow his own horn at every point and turn once met his match. He walked out of that chance encounter with a deflated ego and the look on his face was priceless. After completing class one evening, we embarked on a leisurely stroll off campus. In as much as the street was crowded, the sights and sounds of the city was breathtaking. The three of us were deeply engrossed in a heated conversation. However, the grandiose one so to speak kept interjecting the discussion and veered us off the tangent to remind us how each and every passerby seemed fixated on his ostensibly good looks.
It was quite commonplace for him to do so and since we were accustomed to such comments, we tuned him out. As we approached the unsafe part of the city where untold crime abound, we instinctively stopped talking and tuned into the environment. It was running late into the evening and I was eager to hit the hay but I had to get through this part first. Owing to the notoriety of that surrounding, only daring souls ventured into that area hence it was less crowded. A few feet away stood a group of boisterous women.
One of them gave us a quick glance and motioned to the rest it was about time they crossed the road lest the man in the brown jacket dared to hit on them. The gentle man in the brown jacket went mum. Being cut down to size is not for the faint of heart and can do a number on one. However, he quickly rebounded and used the words of Don Williams in his defense; “There is someone for everyone.” Notice how the script flipped from there is everyone for someone and that someone was him as per his bloated point of view.
One lazy afternoon in the dog days of summer, a friend happened to be in my neighborhood. Whether planned or by coincidence is a story for another day. Be that as it may, he reached out to me and I was sure glad he did owing to the fact that I was at my wits end. Work and school had taken its toll on me. I could have sworn I appeared a little over a hundred years old at that point in time. After exchanging pleasantries, he asked me if I wanted to step out for a drink or two. I responded to the affirmative and within no time I was out the door having grabbed the car keys in the blink of an eye. Capacity or lack thereof to foot the bill was the least of my worries. I had often been accused of being too rigid but this time I agreed to let my guard down and go with the flow.
After settling down in a comfortable spot, the drinks started flowing and anecdotes followed suit. He shared rib cracking jokes and that was a welcome relief which broke the monotony occasioned by the backbreaking workload I had somewhat become accustomed to. When he was barely out of a single digit age count, his mother was the principal of the elementary school he attended. This coupled with the fact that he was one of the youngest kids in their household accorded him certain perquisites and as an offshoot of this, his ego was bloated to the size of an overfed elephant.
All good things end and nothing lasts forever. The good grades he received while there in one way or form fattened him up for slaughter. Tutors dared not rub their principal the wrong way by giving him failing grades. Little did he know how little he knew until the day of reckoning came when he was transferred to another school. During his first math class in the new school, he exposed his ignorance or lack of knowledge to all and sundry. He discovered that the rest were further ahead. To cut the long story short, that was the first and last day he ever stepped foot on that classroom. The dismal display resulted to his transfer to a lower class. You can only imagine how this affected his elephant size ego.
While pursuing a postgraduate course, I once had a classmate who used to outshine others in class and fervently believed that life was a straight line. He aced all courses and his academic pursuits were triumphant. Shortly thereafter, he got a job but within no time, he felt unappreciated and took to the bottle. He was accustomed to accolades and got a reality check instead. To his chagrin, he was shocked to discover that life outside school is anything but cozy. Unlike in the preceding scenario, he got his lesson late in life when it was a tad too late to make a course correction. Pampered for far too long, he believed that no one could outshine him. Little did he know that theoretical concepts are primarily domiciled in books and that in the real world there are far too many variables that determine success.
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