THROWBACK: DO CHILDREN STILL WRITE LOVE LETTERS?

Written by Amarachi Ogbonnaya.

I remember those days with nostalgia, when love letters were being exchanged with reckless abandon in secondary school.
In fact the more love letters you wrote, the more highly regarded you were seen back then.

As a result of my clean handwriting in school then, I made a little extra cash from indulging in my pen and framing people's heart desires on paper. I was the geek so no one was 'toasting' me then, but I had the singular pleasuring of birthing love letter, being a bookwormish person and my knack for new words earned me customers because my words had the effect of making readers accept the proposal even if the toaster was a dullard, most fell for my "big English words" Lol.

Then we would sweep the class at the end of the day, only to see more love letters, letters of heartbroken partners, letters torn by those who didn't accept, rejected letters, Lol, those were the times I loved sweeping the class, Lol, no be today my aproko start 😀😀.

I was asking myself sometime ago if children of this generation still indulged in it imagine my surprise when the little daughter of my friend brought home a love letter that was given to her friend by a boy in their class, please ask me the class of this little girl? As at that time, she was in primary 3, they call it basic three now, at that age and class, I was still enjoying being a baby o.

In that letter, the little boy was begging the little girl to love him, that he would provide for her (eyes rolling, have you finished providing for yourself?), the girl even replied that she will think about it, hian, akuko, think KO, thank ni.

During nysc, my friend (she taught in a government school) brought home exam scripts and shared for us to mark. In one of the questions, they were asked to write a letter to their friends and one particular letter stood out, it was filled with so many promises of the future, if only Ekeitte would accept his hand of friendship...

A while ago, a little boy came to stay with my mom and when he left, I was cleaning the shelf one day when I saw a neatly folded paper, my curiosity was spiked by her neatly folded the paper was and I quickly opened it (lol, aproko aunty), guess what guys, a love letter written by my darling Lil bro, neat handwriting, witty and sleek words, brethren, if I was the address, I will fall for that dude, there and then, I knew that boy would break hearts, ahhhhh, my chwest, my little brother have turn to a Yoruba demon o. I can't remember the words, but I remember they were so smooth and sounded cool just like we like 'em.

All I can say is ...at least the culture is still being practised, those were days that made secondary school interesting.