Forgotten Gas Cooker Remembered
“Didn’t you receive some sort of sign of the incident?” some people would ask crying victims of an impoverishing robbery, ghastly motor accident, derailed train, miserable plane crash, less blood-freezing bitter street-fight or costly mistake. A reply in the negative would attract sympathizers’ “Oh!” and “Aw!” no sneaking feeling that The Affected could have maneuvered things. If, on the alternative, The Affected admitted to having foreseen the unwished incident in a dream, vision, trance or, for that matter, had got a verbal, gestured or written advance notification of it, sympathizers would sound less consoling or their consolation deliver in a distant voice or even get quite cross, with them!
“Then, you’re a fool. By and by the careless type!”
“Too bad you haven’t begun to interpret your helpful dream!”
Sometimes, it would be an occasion to remember that between The Exemplary Man of God seeming all through the born-again and The Eccentric but with Prophetic Gift; it is the latter that is bound to be pestered with continual knocks at his door by anxious callers with their anxiety “What Tomorrow holds for them!”
All the same, the incident I am about to share its substance with you had none of the nastiness of Ghastly Auto Crash, Angering Armed Robbery, Catastrophic Derailment of Train or the as Disastrous Plane Crash. What it rather holds in common with them was the Element of Advance Notification of it and some recipients had felt contented to dismiss it with a wave of the hand while another Lone Character Thought differently of the matter by accepting to act The Forewarned that needed to be Forearmed.
This is a story about an Edmund whose surname I must apologize I had forgotten but could swear it began with an F letter. Edmund F’s swell appetite for Global News, National and Local, was such that he never played down any item of news The Media had time and reason to circulate to The Enquiring Public about events and trends in our immediate environment and beyond. Edmund F one could call A Veritable Hunter for News, a Devoted Listener to the BBC and Patient Ear for The Town Crier’s Bits. With his kchibo Radio, Panasonic Television Internet-Equipped Computer and regular appearances at The News Vendors Stand, he built himself a quadrangular network of active quest for the latest news about The Local National, Sub-Regional, Continental and Global Developments. On one occasion, when the latest hostilities in the Middle East were not forthcoming from his radio, he impatiently waited for it at The Evening Network News Telecast at 9:00pm and when this yielded nothing scampered out of his room in the early hours of next day to a nearby News Vendor’s stand to read it up in a column. Stay right through the 9:00pm, Network News Broadcast Edmund would to ensure that he did not miss a single bulletin. That usually meant being part of the Weather Forecast Slot that accompanied The Broadcast at its tail end: A Package which he had come to accept as credible, because of the accuracy of its previous predictions on Future Weather Situation. That day, The Meteorologist anchoring the slot had predicted a week–long heavy rainfall with thunderstorm that would affect towns and villages in The Rainforest and The Mangrove Swamp Belts.
“No! It can’t be true,” Edmund first declaimed, and then repeated it under his breath, appreciably tensed up and not in a small degree convinced that things would definitely turn out that way. Then, easing up a bit, he chuckled at the thought of the country’s population exploding, because of the approaching rains as husbands and wives staying at home to avoid being buffeted by same become inevitably lured into prolonged fun, games and love-making ending in pregnancies!
But it’s mighty unbelievable Omniscient God divinely permitting A Seven- Day Non-Stop Rain and still expecting holed-up unmarried young men and women with well-functioning sex organs to not act like Lawfully Wedded Husbands and Wives for some chosen Three or Four Days out of The Seven…
Honestly, thought Edmund, The Seven-Days Rains would not squarely fail to showcase all the entrapping powers of The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in Adam’s Allotted Garden of Eden, as it surely would sprout its own eye-catching fruits of superb taste! Soon, it was an intently brooding Edmund over God’s classic reasons for stationing such A tree in an otherwise Innocent Garden and being completely sure that they could would not near it, if they truly feared His blanket ban on the consumption of its fruits…
A funny but also serious five-minute-long pitying by Edmund of Adam and Eve, officially The Justifiably Punished for their unforgivable sin of Disobedience but, possibly, The Sadly Finished for A Still Excusable Sin!
More realistically, Edmund began to consider the emergency action he should take so as to prevent frustration during The Rains. Of course, he had been eating in canteens and roadside shacks before now, in the process placing his gas cooker on holiday. Now, he might be obliged to regret any lousy delay in drafting a long list of food items he should procure soonest from the market against the period, seeing that he would not be able to relive his custom of dashing into those canteens to eat and dashing out.
Not losing another moment, Edmund sat down to build a list of the edible items and other stuff he would need for ten days without budging from his room, then went to bank to withdraw the sum for their purchase. Next day, he was at the market a-shopping for them and mid-course advisedly told himself to extend his list of things to buy to a two-week duration’s.
“Not a single thing wrong with fully launching back to The Kitchen after The Seven Days Thing! On the predicted day, the cloud rapidly grew angry, blackened The Sky, continued to adjust and readjust their positions and lastly helped unlatch the Flood Gates of The Heavens, whereupon The Rains came pouring ceaselessly on defenseless roofs and on An Already Drunk Earth. A day, two days, three days, four, five - six! The rains fought on with their thunderclaps but Edmund did not seem to have noticed much of it nor did his comportment change. No fluctuation of mood, no anxiety, no panic. All the foods, drinks, snacks, appetizers video films, and reading materials he needed were in his four walls. Just a woman friend he had forgotten to invite for The Other Half-Necessity!
Meanwhile, phone calls - Barraging Ones! – were getting across to him from his embattled friends linking up his MTN Line and wishing to hear from him that he had not at all been finding it easy like them: Alfred, Emeka, Effiong, Mustapha, Akinlade, Osahon, Vivian, Daphne and Phoebe: characters who had also tuned in to The National Broadcast on the day the announcement was made but disregarded the substance implicitly challenging The Worst!
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