Miss Grumpy

*Image is mine

I woke up one morning feeling unnecessarily irritable. The thing is, if you ask me what got me upset, I can't even say. I was just hissing, sighing and hitting objects everywhere.

I got a little overboard when I started yelling at my baby girl, something I would ordinarily say to her calmly, I yelled about it.

I yelled at her to hurry up with her breakfast, I yelled at her to come out of the house quickly so I could lock up. At one point, she got so downcasted that as we walked down the road to board a taxi, people in the neighborhood started asking her what's wrong.

We were running late and both wearing a long face as I held her hands and pulled her along to match my speed.

We finally boarded a taxi and I dropped her off at school, while I went to my office that is just a block away.

As I got into the premises of work, the security personnel welcomed me with a good morning and a smile, but my anger was so overwhelming that I could not even fake a smile. I just walked past them quietly and went straight to my office.

I got into my office, sat on my chair, and searched within me to find the root cause of my grumpiness but I couldn't. Since I could not identify what was getting me upset, I just continued at it which really affected my job that day.

I got my job for the day, running my fingers through the keyboard with my eyes fixated on the screen, I heard a knock at the door and of course, I yelled come in but the person kept knocking. At that point, I just said within me if you are tired of knocking, you will open the door and come inside.

After several minutes of knocking, the person stopped. Still continuing with my work on the desktop, I later started hearing footsteps and two people talking, a male voice who sounded like one of the security personnel and then a female voice.

I could hear the security personnel asking her if she tried opening the door and it was locked.

The lady responded no and went further to say she kept knocking and got no response.

Immediately I heard her say that, my already unexplained anger brewed. I paused on my job and waited for them to come in.

In no distant time, I heard another knock at the door, this time the person knocked and opened at once.

I pretended to still be working on the desktop, but I managed to raise my head slightly to confirm who it was and then the security personnel said to me, "madam, were you in the office when this woman came knocking?"

I looked at both of them and without uttering a word, I went back concentrating on what I was doing on the desktop.

"This one she is behaving like this, is there no one else to attend to me?" The woman inquired but the security personnel asked her to have a seat on the chair in front of me that I'll attend to her.

"Don't mind her, maybe she no sleep well for house. Na only she know wetin dey pepper her for body (Pay no attention to her, probably she woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Only she knows what's upsetting her)".

But that's the problem, even I do not know what was upsetting me. The lady took a seat, brought out her documents and dropped them on my table. I drew in several deep breaths then collected the documents and attended to her.

Not long after, another man came and knocked on my door in a way that I found most irritating. I said within me, you will sleep at the door today because you will never get a come in from me. But like the man came prepared, he twisted on my door knob and let himself in.

This man came in without his documents, sat down and just gave me his money for payment. I took a long look at him, waiting for him to do the needful and present his documents but he kept staring back at me. Seeing that he was obviously ready for trouble, I asked him in an aggressive manner, "where are your documents?"

"Oh I'm supposed to come with them? Sorry I wasn't informed. Don't you have an alternative?" The man responded and inquired calmly.

I brought out a form and asked him to feel his details and that of his family exactly as it is on their documents. I gave him a pen and he filled it, after which he handed the form back to me.

I issued him a receipt and as I handed it over to him he said to me, "my dear smile now, you have been wearing a frown since I entered this office. I'm sure whatever it is that got you upset, it's not worth ruining your beautiful face." I was so deep into the anger that I wasn't even ready to give him the satisfaction by faking a smile or pretending to cheer up.

I just pretended not to hear him and got busy with my desktop. I noticed he wasn't going away, so I removed my attention from him completely with the mindset that when he's ready he will leave.

The next thing I knew was this man dropping some Naira notes on my table, in the highest denomination of a thousand. My eyes quickly caught the money, with this same gaze, I looked at this man who was smiling at me and he said, take it, it's for you. Go get whatever the worth that will make you happy.

The moment he said that, my heart melted and I just did not know where all that anger went. I saw myself smiling from ear to ear and kept yelling in excitement thank you sir. Seeing how my mood changed, he said to me, "make sure you maintain this excitement".

He took his leave and I quickly grabbed the money to count it. It was seven thousand Naira and at the time, that was a pretty decent sum of money.

Later in the evening, when I picked up my daughter from school and she saw how excited I was she started pouring out her disapproval of how I treated her earlier. She started with, "mommy since you are happy now, I did not like the way you were yelling at me in the morning. If you want to talk to me, you don't have to yell, talk to me small small, I will still hear you".

Immediately I was reminded of how badly I had behaved for no reason and I had a lot of regrets rushed in as emotions.