A little Party for Us

by Olayinka Eno Babalola

Stub your toe and curse the skies
Cut your finger and curse the knife
Hit your head and kick the wall
Engulfed in seven Billion little worlds
Drunk on our tears and hyped on self-pity
We sit and wait for the world to stop
To give us what we wrongly feel we deserve
The sun still rises with a mocking smirk
As it peeks up behind the clouds oblivious to our pain
The moon glows on us with disdain on her face
Reflecting the mockery of the sun
The rain still falls and the wind still blows
Uncaring of our troubles
And time still moves on and on
Not caring if you follow, go ahead or lag behind
And the entity laughs, at those who sit
In their little parties,
Waiting for a moving world.

Seventeen-year-old poetry and prose writer, Olayinka Eno Babalola, lives in Abuja, Nigeria where she attends the Nigerian Turkish International College.

Olayinka can be contacted via Saralee Perel at: sperel@saraleeperel.com

Please let Saralee know if you'd like to read her exquisite prose, "Life: A Beautiful Tapestry," which appeared on the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation website.

Cape Cod's Award-winning Columnist, Saralee Perel, Introduces her Protégé: Olayinka Eno Babalola
                                       OR
How a Sixty-Year-Old Caucasian Gray-haired American Jewish Woman Became Best Friends with a Seventeen-Year-Old Brilliant, Bronze-skinned, Christian, Nigerian Girl Who Happens to Think I'm Her Writing Mentor

by Saralee Perel

Most readers want to know how Olayinka and I got together. After reading one of my columns published on a Christian website to which she subscribes, she asked to be my Facebook friend. When her funny comments merged with the rest of my wisecracking friends' posts, anyone could have seen she has a professional writer's brain, wit, identity and no question – sensitive heart.

I read every single piece of her prose and poetry I could possibly find, always hoping for more. Never have I been so entranced by a writer and more importantly, by a new friend.

We found each other at the right time in both of our lives. After asking me to teach her some Yiddish words, I learned that she had already been using the Yiddish word "shmuck" more than any Jew I've known. When I told her the literal translation (which is penis) she used it even more. Oy vay, do I love this person.

Upon reading her work, many have asked me, "Was '17-year-old' a typo?"

Olayinka's view of the concept of perfection:

Perfection. That thing that we strive for but just can't seem to achieve, isn't it? Yeah, well that's just the smart way of putting it, so you'll look knowledgeable and super well read. But let's look at it . . . really look at it. What makes something really perfect is when it's down. Exactly. To the bloody letter. Just the way you want it. If you're satisfied, then it's perfect. I like my pizza dripping with cheese. And when I get it, that pizza is, in that singular moment, perfect. So now that you know the meaning of the word, what do you do with this knowledge? Nothing . . . nothing at all.

Perfect.

I asked if she'd like to be a published writer. Within a day of her giving me the go-ahead to submit a work of prose fitting for the hundreds of thousands of members of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, her piece was accepted. It took me 3 years to have a column accepted there. And I have a spinal cord injury! Olayinka is not disabled. She just knew how to make non-able-bodied readers feel a whole lot better. And did she ever. She once said to me, "I've never thought of writing to publish. I've never been published. I always thought that writing was just an outlet of my emotions and compressed thoughts. I'd love to be published and read world wide. Just tell me what to do."

And so I have.

Award-winning Cape Cod Times columnist, Saralee Perel, can be reached at sperel@saraleeperel.com or via her website: www.saraleeperel.com. Her column is now syndicated in forty-one newspapers nationwide.

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