Anyoku, Ifeanyi

Professor Kevin Kelleher

EN 104-001

28th January 2023

How Do You Say NO?

            I was never smallish. As a little boy, I was quite the opposite. I had cheeks that puffed out like a pufferfish and a belly that was not a far cry from a bowling ball. However, my morphological structure did not discourage my roommate in JSS1 (Seventh Grade) from telling people that I was the weakest in the class. Was I surprised? Yes. Should I have been surprised? No.

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            I should not have been surprised since any time he and I had a squabble, he could immediately ask to borrow any of my stationeries – without first apologizing – and I would lend it to him. I should not have been surprised because even if I were buried deep in homework, I would pause what I was doing to help him move his bed or adjust the air conditioning or count the ants running along the wall. I had a problem with the disyllabic word “no”. It sounded rude for me to say, evil for my vocal cords to produce, and seemed so unkind. I should not have been surprised that my roommate had misinterpreted my silly and unintelligent compliance to his demands to mean fear for him. He truly believed he could beat me to a pulp if an argument between us became physical – mind you that he was an entire foot shorter than me and weighed twenty pounds less than I did. My inability to say “no” had helped my roommate develop a bloated ego and an unrealistic belief in his combat prowess. However, this was trivial compared to the other side effects the issue created in my life.

            It made me struggle to follow a decent academic schedule. I could not say no to hanging out with friends when what I wanted to do was complete my literature assignment. My reason: “Saying no to them will make them think I do not want to be friends with them.” Later in the 7th Grade, a kid in my class decided he wanted to become my best friend. He was one of those fellows who loved coming to school for the sake of engaging in raucous arguments and believed in putting off all academic work till the very last moment – or sometimes not doing the work at all. I do not exaggerate when I say that from when that child started hanging around me till the end of his attempts to become my best friend my grades were significantly lower than usual. I continued to have difficulty saying no to people in Eighth Grade. I could not turn down invitations from the wrong group of people, so I started staying out of sight in order to avoid invitations to hang out. I had a few classmates who used me as free labour. Those conversations always went like this: “Could you help me do XYZ?” “Of course!” I also developed the habit of suppressing my viewpoint if it was contrary to what someone said.

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            The turning point came in the middle of Ninth Grade. I had been appointed as the Hostel Prefect and elected as the Class Prefect. Both were easy for me to get: my grades and orderliness made teachers recommend me for the first position and very few students would refuse to vote for everyone’s favourite Yes-Man for the second position. It occurred to me that people expected me to use my leverage to assist them – in ways that my conscience could not accept. They wanted me to aid them in activities which would cause me to feel disgusted with myself. Some people hoped I could lie when I reported tardiness, a few wanted help accessing exam records, and so much more. These were not simply pessimistic assumptions I had conjured. These were requests people made to my face. My initial solution was to avoid confrontation and avoid going the extra mile in my duties. If I were walking down a hallway and suspected students were doing something against the school’s regulations at the end of the hallway, I would turn around and use another route. I really wanted to avoid conflict of interest between the school and my classmates.

            One day, two students in my dormitory got into a fight. The background of the fight was that Child A had noticed that someone had been stealing his supplies for over a month. However, on that fateful Friday afternoon he caught the thief red-handed. Child B claimed that day to be his first time pilfering from Child A – an obvious lie – so they decided to settle things mano a mano. The brawl ended when one of them gave the other a right hook to the eye, resulting in a haemorrhage and the child being rushed to the hospital. I thought to myself that this was a sad case, but there was nothing that needed my involvement. I was not present when the fight happened, and the injured kid would be truthful about what happened to him, right? Surprisingly, the injured kid was trying to convince the school that he had fallen – an illogical loyalty to “Bro Code” and “No Snitching”. His assailant came to me to confirm that I would deliver this twisted tale to the principal. That was when it struck me. All my years of avoiding the word “no”, trying to please people, and attempting to be the most agreeable fellow my classmates ever met had done nothing more than make me a pawn in their eyes. To them, I could not think for myself, had no independent views, and was a wimp who feared everyone. For what seemed like an hour – but was actually thirty seconds – I stared long and hard at my classmate, wishing that my gaze would burn through him. It was as if I was a circus animal who had gotten fed up with being whipped to perform. I was so irked that I replied to the request with a solid “no” – never had a word tasted so good in my mouth. Furthermore, I decided to embrace confrontation and took the initiative to report every detail of the fight and the attempted cover-up to the principal.

            Since that day, I have come to realize many benefits of saying no: it makes people curious to understand your reasons for disagreeing with them; it makes people view you as someone who will not comply with unjust decisions; your close friends can trust that if they ever went astray, they could count on you to stubbornly disagree with them until they found their way back to the right track.

 

 

 

 

 

I was extremely shocked to discover that saying no did not in any way discourage people from voting for me when I ran for other student government positions – I ended up becoming the Head Boy in Eleventh Grade. I can never understand my initial problems with enunciating “no”. However, I am glad that I have the personal experience to tell people why saying both “yes” and “no” is necessary for a successful life.