There are days when you take your clothes to a seamstress expecting simple adjustments—and you end up questioning your temperament. This is one of those days.                                                                          It all started when I noticed that two of my clothes needed zippers, and a few others needed shaping. So I took them to a seamstress close to my hostel—with my roommate tagging along for backup.     When we got there, she asked us what needed to be done. We explained everything, and she took our measurements—without even telling me how much it would cost.                                   

 So I asked, “Ma, how much?                        

She said, “Zipper is ₦800, and shaping is ₦1,000.”                                                                   

 I shock. “Is that for two zippers?”.           

 She said  is  per zipper.

Zippers that I bought for ₦200 the other day? She claimed I didn’t buy the original ones. After some back and forth, we bargained and agreed on a price. She told me to come back the next day.

Well, life happened—I couldn’t make it the next day, so I went the following day. I picked up one of my trousers and saw a black zip on red fabric. My eye twitched.

“Ma, why is there a black zip on red trousers? 

It has a flap,”she said.              

  “So wetin do the flap?”i asked                   

She said, “The flap is supposed to cover the zip so that nobody sees it.”

I asked her to remove it. She said she couldn’t—that people even put black zips on white clothes.                                                 

At that point, I kept quiet. When I’m angry, I don’t like to talk too much because I know I might say something I’ll regret. But I still said, “Ma, please remove that sh** from my cloth.”

The next day, I went back to pick everything. I tested the trousers I gave her to shape—and she had over-shaped them! I asked, “Why did you measure me if you weren’t going to use the measurement?” 

She collected the cloth, looked at me, and asked, “What is your temperament?”            

I asked, “My anger?”

She told me to ask my roommate—that nobody passes through secondary school without knowing what temperament means.

I said “What if my roommate doesn’t know?”

She said, “They will.”

Then she advised me to read a book on temperament, that it would help me a lot. I could already tell where she was going.

So I said, “What if I don’t want to change? nkor "

She said everyone has their own temperament—but she didn’t understand mine.

I just said, “Chai,” and walked away.