One great marvel of life is people who are rich but don’t show it off. Like, they’ll just be so humble and all, doing the same thing as everyone else and basically having fun. Until one day, something would happen and your eyes will clear; you’ll realize that the person you’ve been hanging with is actually the son of a popular senator!
I’ve noticed that the people who have real money, they never really talk about it or try to show off. They just go about their businesses as if it’s no man’s concern. Many of them are nice people when you get to know them. Because they are millionaires and billionaires, it’ll feel like they have two heads, and approaching them would be difficult. However, there’s nothing to it. They’re always open to conversation, especially one that will bring them more money. As long as you don’t try to take advantage of their audience, then you’re covered.
However, some derive joy in shoving their wealth in people’s faces. They have the money, and they won’t stop showing it off. One time while I was at the supermarket, I noticed a guy park his Mercedes Benz GLE. The only reason I noticed it was because just as he was about to turn off the vehicle, he revved the engine loudly so that everyone (including myself) looked in his direction and saw that he was stepping out of the most expensive car in the lineup.
Well, for people who choose not to say anything, just living their lives on a low and doing everything they want, they’re the real MVPs because they keep their financial status private and make genuine friendships.
My experience with finding out I had a rich friend was in the first semester of my ND2, I think this was just before the pandemic threw the world into lockdown. When I realized this thing about this guy, I finally saw that I had seen the signs, I just didn’t know it was on that level.
You see, my friend was a coursemate in my department, he’s a very funny person and always making silly jokes. One of those people that their jokes aren’t really funny, but their personality alone makes it enjoyable. He didn’t have any problem at all. This guy dressed normally like all of us in the trenches, simple palm slippers so it was hard to imagine he wasn’t going through the same sapademic as the rest of us.
I should have noticed however from the onset that he was different. He was the first to always pay his school fees, within the first two or three weeks of resumption, he would clear it all. And also, he would be the first to pay for every one of his textbooks and practicals. Like, while many of us were still trying to plot scale preference graphs to know the more important books to pay for at the moment, this Baba would pay for everything around the same time.
I didn’t think anything of it. I always knew that all fingers were not equal. I knew there were parents who gave the money to their kids in bulk, so they don’t have to send more later on. That’s what I thought this guy was doing. I believed that he was quickly paying everything off so he won’t spend all the money by mistake.
I still didn’t think anything of it when we were talking one day and he offhandedly told me that he cooked soup at least every three days, and the soup had to cost at least two thousand naira to prepare before he would enjoy it. This was back in 2020, so for a student, N2000 soup is a pretty big deal. Back then most of us were bragging about how we could use the tiniest amount of money to cook soup and this guy casually say said the more expensive it was, the better.
I believe he didn’t plan to say that, I guess he got carried away with the conversation because when I asked him if he was just teasing me, he laughed and said nothing else. Making me believe that it was just a little white lie.
One day, I noticed he was looking sad and I asked him what happened, he told me that his lodge was robbed the previous night and his laptop and phones were taken from him. It’s sad, right? Yeah. But I soon forgot all about that when I found out every other thing this guy had planned. He told me he wanted to change lodge, that the experience left him traumatized and he won’t be able to sleep there again.
It’s natural and I was trying to convince him to relax, that it will all pass. At least, if he was going to move out, he could wait until the end of the year and change lodge. But this guy was not having it. By the time he told me, he already had an appointment to see an agent that evening. The agent was charging him N50k for taking him to the lodge but this guy was unbothered. He also wanted to buy a new phone and asked me if I could follow him to town to get one. I did.
That day in town, he retrieved his sim card and got his new phone working perfectly before placing an order for a new laptop from Lagos. It was then I started realizing that this guy had to hold serious money in reserve for him to be able to do all this just the day after the robbery. He got a new lodge, bought a new phone, and also a laptop. That day alone, I can assure you that he spent nothing less than N500k and it wasn’t even as if he did anything. He was just pissed about the stress the ordeal was putting him through.
It was then I started connecting the dots and I realized that this guy is not just anyone. He’s a very quiet and humble guy, and when it comes to spending money he doesn’t skimp on it. He spends to enjoy and give himself the very best. He’s still at that lodge to date, although he’s no longer my coursemate. While I chose to do two years of IT before returning to school, he did only one, and that pushed him a year ahead of me.
I still see him every once in a while, and I have to say, it’s good to see that he has not changed at all. He’s still the humble and quiet guy he has always been. Cracking dry jokes but somehow making everyone laugh.
