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I feel like Benjamin Button. Not only do I wear shorts and sandals but I have started adding fractions to my age.
Why...
...and another thing
Am I becoming more Tom Brown Schooldays when I am really approaching John Brown’s body and his gruesome grave?
As I slip-slide relentlessly towards my dotage, I find the things I did as a kid suddenly seem very attractive. And it worries me.
After surviving 60 years swearing the only time you’d see me wearing Jesus sandals is at a fancy dress party… I bought a pair. Now, I heavily caveated that to friends by saying they are plastic and leather and I use them only to wash the cars. But I was sitting outside writing this blog and blow me! They are on my feet and I am wearing shorts… and a cap!
I have also developed a hankering after slot car racing. I fancy a huge Scalextric set. My mother gave mine away to the next door neighbours’ brat, who turned out to become a former Attorney General. No excuse. In my mind, it had been gifted without my consent and therefore illegally and he should have returned it. Now I wander around our home wondering which room I can purloin as a miniature Silverstone or Monaco F1 track.
Same with food. I am getting fussy about vegetables and leaving behind the cheese board for spotted dick and custard.
Is this simply a by product of the times we now live in? Certainly, I have never been in one place for this long since I was an ankle biter. Maybe my world is so limited that it is just like a big playroom. I can’t go too far, mix with strangers and have to be home by dark!
...and another thing
Age. It’s only when people ask how old I am and my wife helpfully chips in with…
“He will be 64 this year”,
that I find myself mewing in response…
“So actually I’m only 63 and a third now”!
Fractions. I haven’t argued about age fractions since I got into double figures. Now, however it seems perfectly natural to be a little bit more accurate.
...and another thing
The most worrying time of all is in the evening. Mainly because of this fasting diet of not eating late at night, I am trying to eat really early. Say between 6 and 7. Just like when I was a kid. And to make matters worse, I may by then be wearing a dressing gown ready to binge watch whatever Netflixhuluprimepeacock has ready for me! Again just like a kid.
But in reality I cannot go out and party anymore. Restaurants are riskier than drunken downhill-skiing in the dark and nightclubs as safe as playing hopscotch on a minefield.
So is Covid bringing out the Barbie doll and GI Joe in my generation? Before you know it my wife will be buying Twinkies and Moon Pies and I’ll be exercising with a hoolahoop and a vibrating belt!
But if you think State Nanny is going to let us out of our playrooms before next spring, you are very much mistaken. Try it and you will be put on the naughty step and fined a ton of money!
Stay safe!
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2 Comments
So true Mark, as the advances in medical science lengthen our lives, we really risk the nappies/diaper to nappies/diaper becoming true. As your senior by all of 3 years, I can attest that what you have absolutely correctly described is indeed an amusing truth. Perhaps we hanker after an idealised youth, as humans are known to have the capacity (thankfully) to mostly only remember the good things.
It will be a Chopper bike next !!!