Girl talk: It's okay to turn down some invitations

Just for today, allow me to address those people who like tagging their significant others to uninteresting places. For the record, some of those places make us have near death experiences as we struggle to stay alive while we suppress the anger within us.

When I was in my early 20s, I once rose and walked away from someone who had promised me a fun filled evening only for him to take me to a place where very old men were singing and swinging at a snail’s pace like emaciated lilies. At 20, you cannot take someone to a place where aged people are singing ‘Helule helule’ and dancing without lifting their legs as they flap their elbows like marabou storks preparing for a take-off.

That’s an insult to the energetic me at that time. All I needed in my early 20s is to visit places where musicians are energetic and can even fly from the roof to the stage to make a grand entrance. A place where I can stand on top of the table resisting bouncers trying to bring me down as I shout “Eighteen till I die”. But that was me more than ten years ago, the current me can even visit at a place where people are having a snoring competition and enjoy every bit of it.

I know I am not the only one who has ever been invited to a boring place. We have those women who drag their men along to salons and make them sit there for half a day trying to find something to do. The men flip through pages of women magazines forcing themselves to find relevance in them as they try to pretend that they aren’t interested in all the 411 being thrown from all the possible corners in the room. I am tempted to blame the women who make their men go through this but then again I ask, does anybody crucify them on those seats? There is nothing a woman who has her hair half done can do to you. Just rise up and walk out. The worst she can do is curse from within and refuse to talk to you that evening. Like Lazarus, just rise up and walk!

There was this time this handsome man I was dating asked me to accompany him to the garage for 10 minutes so that he could get something for his ride. We were supposed to go on picnic somewhere in Nakuru from Nairobi and I was all excited in my picnic wear and cap sipping some cold juice with my feet resting on the dashboard. At first, I sat in the car as I waited for him to buy whatever it was so we could kick off our journey but the mechanic requested me to step out for 10 minutes as he fixed it.

Ten minutes turned into an hour then two, then three and before I knew it, I was spending my seventh hour yawning beside a pile of scrap metal in my shots trying to shake ants off me. Just how did he decide to work on his ride on the same day we were supposed to hit the road and worse still tag me along? What was so hard in doing all that by himself then come back for me later? You should have seen me pacing up and down the garage trying so hard to control my anger. He on the other hand was having a time of his life as he learnt more about the parts of his vehicle. Let’s just say by the time we left that place, I was so close to exploding that I decided to stretch myself on the back seat and sleep till we got to our destination.

No one deserves to go through what I went through on that day. If I could, I would have ran out of there screaming but there was a little voice within me telling me to hold on and I did. Next time though, I will not give the little voice any audience, if it isn’t making me happy, I will walk out just as I did the day someone was trying to make me listen to ‘Helule helule’ which was being sung in a sharp and shrill voice!

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