New year resolutions and sundry probabilities

By Ifedayo Babalola

The magic date draws nigh. The first day of January is unlike any other for many reasons. It is the doorway to whatever the year portends – a landmark by which successes and failures are measured, and a sort of universal birthday for mankind.
It is also doubly significant due the number of humans who choose the January 1st zero hour to press the reset buttons of their existence.

You probably had it figured out by mid-year that you should stop smoking. On the fifth day of July therefore, you smoke your last stick. Or so you thought. Three days later, and after much agonizing, a mysterious stick of cigarette materializes in-between the middle and fore fingers of your right hand. More bizarre still, the hand is raised to your mouth by an invisible and irreversible force. Your lips part. Match, strike and light! End of resolve.

You might even be a beautiful girl, and there is this boy you think you really really love. He, on the contrary, treats you really really bad. He is always making unholy demands but is unwilling to make a marital commitment. A classic time waster he is. Everyone says he is not worthy of your affection, but you really can’t put a finger on why you love him so much. Anyway, he is now on his last chance.

Then on the fourteenth day of August, he fails to show up for an appointment to take you to the cinema. That’s it then! Bang! No more! In order to ensure you stand by your resolve, you inform a number of friends – it’s over! Done!
Three days later, your phone rings. Your heart skips. You ignore the phone and clutch your feeble heart. The phone rings again…. You pick it up and let your heart skip very very fast. I know. You can explain. End of resolve.

When resolutions fail that are made on ordinary, lesser days, there is, thankfully, a universal day of transformation,and redemption. It does not matter how much change-resistant the habits have been, nor is it important how gripping the symptoms of withdrawal associated with them are. January one offers hope.

Hence, our chain-smoker and our lover girl pin their hopes on the next 1/1/—-.The clock is ticking, but first towards December 31, the eve of liberation day.

Elaborate plans are made for the final rendezvous with the enemy. At 20.00 hrs, the smoker meets with his drinking pals at the favorite joint. Lots of time, bottles and sticks to kill before 23.50 hours. ‘I’ll oversmoke so much tonight that I’ll never ever want to do it again,’ he vows. Afterwards, ten minutes leading to new year will be enough to dash into a nearby church to table his resolution before God.

21.00 hrs at a restaurant in the town center. The lover-girl had sat opposite not-so-lover boy. Farewell dinner over, he tried to convince her that the next place on the night’s itinerary should naturally be a top night club. But she would have non of it. She had earlier promised a couple of concerned friends she’d be at their church for crossover night where she would submit her resolution and her entire life unto God. She intended to be there at ten for Praise and Worship. That is the best part of any service as far as she is concerned.

23.45 hrs. Now sandwiched between two friends who watch her every move as if worried she might change her mind, lover girl raises up her new year resolutions. Number one on the list of things she wants out of her life is ‘No more rendezvous with the tempter and no more sins’.

The hour is near!,’ Thunders the loudspeakers. ‘Pray! Pray! Pray! Old things are passed away. Receive your healing! Reject poverty, cast out sins! Call in righteousness, decree prosperity….!’
And she prayed and rejected and invited…and bound the time waster….

23.46 hrs. Smoker drains his cup and rises to his feet. He makes straight for the exit. First sign of victory. He is followed from a distance by a couple of drinking pals desirous to witness the resurrection. At the church entrance, he pulls a long drag off his final cigarette, tilts his head up, and blows the smoke skywards.
Then Smoker throws the unfinished stick on the pavement, grinding it angrily into bits with his hard-soled black shoe.

‘Sixty seconds more!’

There’s no more room inside the church building. Smoker joins the out-crowd. Everyone is raising up pieces of paper. He won’t have time for that and he is not bothered.
‘I am not here for ceremonies,’ He mumbles, hands in trouser pocket. ‘But God, I don’t want to smoke any more…. I promise you that I won’t smoke anymore….’

‘Thirty!’

‘Every tempter, out of my life!
You time waster, I bind you!
God help me! I will take no more gifts from him!’
I will sin no more…!’

‘Five! Four! Three! Two! One!…..’

Happy New year!!!!!!!

Zero hour. Reset button pressed for all lives, and all viruses quarantined.

The clock, surprisingly never stopped ticking towards the end tape of the next 365 days. As our story ends at midnight though, we will remain oblivious to the many probable resolve-bursting occurrences that are wont to manifest from the moment the resolutions are uttered.

We will never know, for example, if on stepping out of church, lover girl checks her mobile phone to find twenty five missed calls, fourteen of them from not-so-lover boy. Maybe she will find his BMW 4WD parked on the streets waiting for her, lights flashing in blazing colours, soft equalized music filtering into the night from its low-lit, leather-upholstered bowel, offering to save her the trouble of trekking halfway home on a drunken night. Hmmmm….. No harm in that, is there?

We will never know as well if on wobbling out of church, the smoker’s drinking pals will pull out their cigarette packs and light up, blowing the first puff into the left and right sides of his face….

So many probabilities, just in the very first hour.

Ifedayo Babalola, writer and satirist, writes from Ibadan.
(ifebabs@hotmail.com)