LAST WORD
On Reality With A Twist
Ochieng still recounts the story of Alex with a great deal of amusement . Alex ’ s saga is the finest example that Ochieng can think of that demonstrates just how quirky human nature can be and whoever said that often reality is stranger than fiction must have had Alex precisely in mind .
Alex was Ochieng ’ s classmate in high school and he was remarkable only for being average . He was laid back with a bored demeanor , he did not get involved in sport or extra-curricular activities . Alex ’ s mission in life was to get through it with minimum effort .
If Alex was involved in any team effort then you can be sure that team would lose whatever they were trying to achieve since Alex was always the weak link and no one wanted him on their team . Alex just existed but somehow managed to scrape through as a grey background .
All that changed in the third term of the third year of high school as a result of a series of events that had such a strange outcome and consequences that Ochieng would have been hard pressed to believe if he had not personally been present as a witness .
It was a Saturday afternoon and the school ’ s soccer team , which Ochieng captained was having another match with a rival school . The match was underway and since it was the highlight of the week the entire school plus the rival school spectators were wildly cheering .
By coincidence a sister school had been invited by the debating society for a social that evening and they had arrived early and since the whole school was at the game they headed to the soccer pitch to watch the final moments of the game .
The right winger was hurtling down the pitch when the rival defender gave him a hard and rough tackle and they both landed heavily on Alex who was watching by the sideline . As it happened the ball was still in play and a striker took advantage of the melee and scored the winning goal .
The game had to be paused temporarily because when the two players landed on Alex he not only suffered a concussion but was in writhing pain and had to be carried to the school sanatorium . The school nurse decided to rush him to hospital and he was admitted for observation .
When the girls went back they must have
We assume that the rich and famous live fairy-tale lives where everything works perfectly and we ignore that those that reach those dizzy heights are very human and suffer the same emotional turmoil that every human being is afflicted with as the price of being alive . narrated the details of the exciting match and what happened next was what today would be termed as a story going viral . Alex was inundated with get well soon cards from the girl ’ s school . Girls he did not even know .
Soon the story spread to other girls ’ schools nearby and they too started to send in sympathy cards . The story soon morphed into an unlikely spin that Alex got hurt as he scored the winning goal for Ochieng ’ s team and Alex was now unbelievably a star that every girl wanted .
Any attempt to correct the story by pointing out that Alex was not even in the team was met by a contemptuous dismissal that the person explaining was just jealous and was trying to steal the thunder from the brave Alex . Alex was by now a legend .
Alex took to his new status like a duck to water and for the next one year all those students that despised him had to befriend him if they hoped to even talk to some girls . As amazing as it may sound Alex left school with his reputation as a great sportsman intact .
Ochieng would like to remind you that if you think that Alex ’ s saga had an improbable twist to it then you may need to check a few realities that are in the open and begin to question why human beings behave the way they sometimes do .
Ochieng in his humble opinion has always tried to figure out how the Kim Kardashian and Kanye West relationship even started . If there is a celebrity couple that seemed totally mismatched right from the start it is
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