I BELIVE THAT PEOPLE ARE NOT ALWAYS WHAT THEY SEEM TO BE
People sometime portray themselves to be what they are not; people can be deceptive, like the old saying goes “Never judge a book by its cover.” Applying this to everyday live, this means that you cannot draw conclusions about others after a first encounter with them because people cannot be judged by whatever behavior they are putting up at a particular point in time.
Therefore this is what I believe; People are not always what they seem to be and cannot be fully trusted. As I grew up into a teenager various happenings solidified my belief.
I remember always sitting in the brown, cane rocking chair in my mom’s bedroom at the age of eleven, listening to her telling me different stories while she painted her fingernails bright red with her Essence nail polish ( I have never seen her use any other type of nail polish except essence until she died). All the stories she ever told me had only one meaning: Trust. She told me to trust people but to a certain extent. Years after, sitting on the balcony of my house (one of my favorite places), watching my dad muttering under his breath while he changed the tires of his car and, my kid sisters running around the compound plucking the red hibiscus flower from the hibiscus tree which is as old as the house, and my dad always telling them to slow down so that they wont fall and hurt themselves when they move too fast, I always remember those little talking sessions I had with my mum about trust, I always hear her voice in my head saying very clearly those words that has formed my belief: People are not always what they seem to be so you cannot trust them fully.
A few weeks after my eighteenth birthday, on the 13th of June 2005 something happened that made me fall deeper into my belief. On this fateful day, after playing a long, hard basketball game at the Emole courtfield(this is a name of a basketball and soccer field in Nigeria).I was tired and was eager to get home and take a shower. Earlier on, before this date I had played a basketball game with this new guy who does not live in my street and because he was so good at basketball I thought he was cool and let him be my friend. I took him to my house and everyone liked him too because he was an easygoing person but I guess it was because he was very good at pretending to be what he was not. He got everyone fooled!
On this particular day I was tired form the long basketball game we played and I was sweating profusely so I decided to sit on a tree stump by the side of the court which has been turned into a chair by the spectators of the basketball game. I sat there for quite awhile visualizing how the court will look like after the renovation currently going on.
Finally my brother and two of friends joined me and we started talking, we talked for some minutes before Dagger (this is the name of this new boy) joined me.
I was supposed to go to Nourisha (this is the name of a fast food joint in my country) to pick up something for myself and I volunteered to give a ride to anyone that wants to go towards that area. Two of my friends told me the needed a ride. After that I started walking home with my brother, two of my friends and dagger who said he wanted to visit his uncle who lives around that area. I was surprised because he never mentioned that to me. As I was driving out of my house to go to nourisha with my friends I saw dagger running towards my house. I asked him why he was not in his uncle’s place and he told me nobody was there. We all got in my car and I left for nourisha, on getting to nourisha dagger told me to make a left into a street that will lead to his house, I did and that was the mistake I made. Before I got into the street, Dagger made a phone call and spoke in a very funny language and when I asked him he just smiled said nothing.
On entering the dark alley a car came rushing towards me and almost backed up into my car.
Four armed men jumped out of their car and came rushing towards me, taking all our belongoings, phones and money. I would not have minded if the car was not taken away from me. Now the funny thing was that daggers phone and belongings were taken too. So it was normal that nobody suspected him. To cut a long story short, the thieves were caught by the police and they confessed that Dagger was the informant in the robbery.
I was so stunned, I couldn’t believe it! Looking at him, you would never believe he could do such a thing. Dagger was an easy going person who smiled a lot most of the times; he is light skinned and looks so young and innocent that you won’t believe he could hurt a fly. He was always going around cracking jokes and making everyone around him laugh.
The above brief description of Dagger portrays him as a very trustworthy person but as you can see he wasn’t, so people can be very deceptive.
“People are not always what they seem to be and cannot be fully trusted” This is my believe formed when I was little and solidified as I grew into teenager.