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OH lala, there was a time when romantic poetry was conveyed through love letters. Those elegantly handwritten words that melted the hearts, and made the ticker miss beats as the excitement stirred by the words through out the body, as the recipient read the letter, even to the point of peeing a bit, unconsciously, in your undies. You felt the tingle and your toes curled a bit as you soaked in sweet words in the letter. Ohh, those days are gone!
Why am I going back in time? For starters, I am disturbed by what I am seeing nowadays – the audacity with which some young secondary students, both boys and girls, dabble into sexual relationships, without caring a hoot about the consequences. It is alarming. Whoever told them that relationship between opposite sexes must be about sex. How on earth would teenagers begin to fancy illegitimate affairs as if they have total control of their lives? What is seen is that these young people are fast forwarding into adulthood practices while still in early teenage years. This current craze among young people to engage in adult stage activities and practices is driving their hormones into overdrive. The result is a reckless and careless embrace of sex to a frightening and incredible degree.
What you find is that secondary school students, aged 14-16, who should be focused on studies and passing their Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) devote attention to illicit sex affairs.
Nigerians would too easily recall the video which trended some time ago about two teenage students of Chrisland College, who were supposed to be in Dubai for an academic exercise, but delved into something else, totally unrelated to the purpose for which their parents paid for them to go on excursion with other students. While that episode trended at the time, it entertained some and served as a teaching tool for many other schools and their wards.
Seeming like a trend, there has also been reports that some final year male and female students of a particular Unity school in Lagos State sneaked out of the premises and lodge in a hotel for some days. The bubble burst when one of the girls requested the mother to send her provisions and food like a student would ask. On the day that the mother brought the items, it was discovered that the girl could not be found in the school. Interrogation of her friends revealed that three boys and three girls had gone out of the school and were later traced to the hotel. Even as they gradually came back to school, one expects shame, remorse and repentance for exhibiting very poor conduct, embarrassing themselves and their families, yet they were bold as lion, as if it was their right to be in a hotel for days, instead of school. What a wasteful way to start adulthood!
In the same vein, most parents might not also know that their wards who are sent to school sometimes leave the school premises to hang in their friend’s home, both the boys and the girls. They plan such escapades in school and take off to have freedom. This freedom involves easy access between them so that sex would be easy without anyone discovering the game plan just like Michael and Mercy who had started eating their future already. Michael 17 and Mercy 16 had started serious dating from the class. In this scenario, Michael visited his girlfriend Mercy, whose father is a pastor, and a mother a petty trader. It was obvious both parents had gone out of the house when Michael sneaked into the apartment where both had a fun-filled day. Next was their half nude pictures which surfaced on their classmate’s timeline and it started trending.
Well, golden growing up days, when a man finds his specification in a girl, both do not dabble into sexual pleasures, rather a subtle approach with serious love letters and emotional cards which reigned supreme in those days. Love letters, not sex, were a timeless classic for a reason. Can anybody hold up a record of text messages with that same feeling of belonging? Or print out an email to sigh over, no matter how beautiful it looks like? But love letters were a beautiful alchemy in words scrawled across a page in ink, written with ordinary hand to say ‘I love you’. There was no sex attached. Without waiting for it to be echoed back, simply to say it because it was felt in it that moment and needed nothing more to write; then seal it with a lick, press and kiss. It does not appear in an instant, words flashing onto a screen; but instead, it is carried from one’s heart to another, hand-delivered into an envelop, to be discovered and opened. A love letter is more than just the words it contains, although those are important. It shows efforts made and time taken; when those words could easily have been typed out in a couple of minutes and sent for immediate receipt. Again, love letters are grand dreamy gesticulations often ignored because they don’t store attention. They are quietly written, sent and read. Love letters are private communications, words shared between two and unnoticed by the world around them. Even a letter written in the wake of a failed relationship is also a love letter of a kind. The timeless nature of love letter is what the present teenagers are missing because it is not about whether it is saved and one day found and read again. It is about the moment a lover holds it in their hands; when they read the words, then pause to read them again. It is a letter being folded and unfolded many times that the creases become deeper, creating fragile breaking points where each additional time a letter is opened, it must be handled with care to keep it off from tearing apart. Another quality of a love letter which the internet teenagers are missing is that no matter how fragile the paper gets, or how faded the ink, one never got tired of reading the words written as love letters. Though the words cannot survive flooding or fire outbreak, but sometimes they survive the relationship. The written words of a love letter do not come with sex, rather outlive stakeholders, and tell the stories, capturing the moments as they are lived in.
The question is where are the love letters of our time? Words on papers cannot capture tender moments or bitter arguments or passion igniting and simmering; only live a little of ourselves on the page, but leave so much love.
They are quietly written and read privately, not in the open for fear of parents and guardians alike. Even with the excitement of the letters, one also tries to behave well so that no one would suspect any foul play around. Till date, marriages of over 40 could recount their love letter headings. My aunty tells her love letter headline ‘Say no to other men’ from her husband before her wedding date was announced. I have not forgotten the story of the Koshoni’s who love letter cemented their union before the walked down the aisle. Late Chief of Naval staff, Air Vice Admiral Patrick Koshoni was one of the smartest boys at St. Gregory College Obalande then; while his widow, Mrs. Margret Koshoni was also a teenage student at Queens College. It happened that young Margret was a classmate and friend of Koshoni’s younger sister. It was in the process of visiting her friend that their paths crossed. Next was unending love letters according to Mrs. Koshoni. “Whenever his sister is coming to school, she must come with a love letter for me, so I am always excited to read new vocabularies and correct English from my love letter and that formed the basis of our relationship until we settled down in marriage.”
Interestingly, the days of love letters gives both rooms to understudy each other, allow parents make their inquiries, weigh the pros and cons and give a nod, then the two families would agree and give their consent before sex comes in to play.
But today’s teenager starts a relationship on a tiny rope which breaks almost immediately and they fall by the way side like a pack of cards.
Dear teenagers, it is certain that the duty of parents is to provide accurate information on sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, sexual intimacy and God’s truth in scripture as vital subjects to the growing children. Young men and women, there is time for everything, dabbling into premature sex is a dangerous zone to walk into because the dangers are obvious. If you must date, try love letter as a tool to sustain your relationship which will lead into marriage. Parents are doing theirs, give a listening ear for your own good.
