“Come and enter. I’m leaving immediately. I’ll not waste time.” The bus driver tried to cajole us into entering his vehicle.
“Ha, that’s what they always say. Please, let’s enter a smaller vehicle. Me, I don’t want to waste time waiting for the bus to get filled… All these buses, they always keep stopping at every junction to pick or drop passengers” My friend objected, refusing to even consider that this driver just might be different from others she had encountered. Personally, I just wanted to be in a vehicle and already on my way home and I was cool with whatever decision we took as long as it got us into a vehicle. Soon enough, she was dragging me to a smaller bus and we were soon seated.
“You see! If we had entered that bus, we would have had to wait for it to get filled and I know all these drivers, there is no how he would have agreed to move with empty sits. We would have had to stay here till God knows how long…” She continued to lament about the delay we have been saved from having to experience.
“Shey you people know the price is 150 Naira?” The driver asked, interrupting her flow.
“Eh!!?” She shrieked ” It’s Government College we are stopping oh!!”
“Abeg, if you no fit pay, come down.”
” Queen, please let’s come down! Which one is 150? All these drivers that want to get rich over night”
And so we were once again standing by the road. I was exhausted from the shopping we had been doing all evening and I was determined to enter the next available vehicle, even if it was an empty coaster bus. As it was, the bus we had initially rejected was still loading and the driver once again beckoned to us.
“Come and enter na.”
“It’s 100 Naira to government college oh.”
“Eh, no problem. Enter”
So we entered. The stone that had been abandoned had become the cornerstone. True to the driver’s words, within minutes, we were on our way. About ten minutes into the journey, my friend said, ” He has actually not been stopping and picking passengers like most drivers do.” Which was very true. The bus driver had actually been true to his words.
We had gotten so used to bus drivers lying about things like this that it was very easy to assume that this one was lying too. We didn’t want to trust him because he could be just like every other bus driver. We are told all that glitters is not gold but then sometimes, what glitters is actually gold and when we avoid it, we end up losing out.
Dear young person, I know it’s hard to take a chance but if you always think all that glitters can never be gold then you will never find gold.
DEAR YOUNG PEOPLE 
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