With great age, comes great rudeness
AN elderly gentleman enters a biltong shop in the East Rand Mall the other morning and asks for the owner. He has turkey-like loose flesh connecting his chin and Adam’s apple. He’s wearing what appears to be a Foreign Legion cap with a back flap the colour of cow dung, a charcoal cardigan, and a neon-green T-shirt with the legend “Surfers do it standing up,” which reminds me of Vavi’s moment of glory at Cosatu House. To finish off the look, his check pants are stuffed into grey socks that come up to the top of his calves, creating the effect of two Eet-Sum-Mor boxes disappearing into his knees. My first thought is: “Why on earth would anyone leave his house dressed like that?” Then I figuratively slap the back of my own head. “Don’t be silly. That guy is probably 75 and couldn’t give a rat’s pancreas what anyone thinks of him.”
The first words out of his mouth, after impolitely introducing himself to the owner, are: “What kind of baloney are you people trying to shove down our throats?” He thereupon launches into a lengthy harangue about how generally dreadful their biltong is. The poor owner invites him into the back of the shop, trying to shush him before she loses all her customers, but he is as unstoppable as a politician with a TV mic under his nose. The coup de grâce of his rant is: “You do know the difference between biltong and fat, don’t you?”
What struck me about the mostly oneway exchange was how the rest of us in the shop carried on browsing while exchanging knowing looks and stifling giggles. After the geriatric Eet-Sum-Mor turkey left, a few customers spoke to the owner in gentle, empathetic tones. There was an almost tacit acceptance that hey, the old geezer is probably pushing 80 and is therefore entitled to give anyone a piece of his mind.
My life is made up of hundreds of tiny lies on a daily basis. From the pretty innocuous “I’m great” response each time anyone asks how I am doing, to pressing the “Sorry, I’m in a meeting” auto text icon when someone I don’t feel like talking to calls me. All freaking day long. I figure that when I’m 78 and someone asks how I am, I will be able to be honest: “Let’s see, my knees hurt, I lost my dentures on Valentine’s weekend, my arsehole of a son won’t return my calls, my wife bores me with the same stories she’s told me 237 times for 46 years, I haven’t had a bowel movement since that Bashir escaped arrest, and I haven’t had an orgasm since the 2010 World Cup.”
Now that is the freedom that I believe The Arch struggled for in a shrill voice and purple frocks. Not this pseudo-freedom where I have to pretend that I haven’t noticed that the makeup of the woman at the British Airways check-in counter makes her look like a purplish-orange meerkat. I bet that at least one 82-year-old passenger did look at her with concern and say, “Oh dear! Whatever happened to your face, love?”
The irony is that human beings are born with the direct honesty of senior citizens. Part of our job as parents is to teach our kids the art of being pathological liars. We call it teaching manners, politeness and etiquette. I remember standing in a Makro queue with my firstborn, Ntobeko, when he was about four. He pointed at the fellow in front of us. “Baba, why does this man smell like a live chicken?” I quickly smothered his mouth with my torso to stop him saying what everyone within a 200km radius could smell. My elder brother pulled the same stunt when he was about seven; an aunt dished up some ox tripe for us during a traditional function and he declined it, citing the fact that it smelt like cow poo.
My seven-year-old regularly pokes my tum- my and tells me, “When are you going to gym like Mama to lose this fat tummy?” The only other person who says that to my face is my 70-year-old mom. The first thing she said to He pointed at the fellow in front of us. ‘Baba, why does this man
smell like a live chicken?’ me when she saw me two weeks ago was,
“Cha, uyakhuluphala bo sgila!” (You sure are putting on a lot of weight). It was water off a duck’s back. I didn’t care. The filters between her mouth and brain have been shot for about a decade now. Walking through a market with her is a cringefest. She’ll poke around a vendor’s stall, picking up a bunch of bananas and, with a wrinkled nose, go, “My God, these have to be the sorriest bananas I’ve ever seen!”
But even our elderly can’t hold a candle to other members of the animal kingdom in the honesty stakes. Watching a herd of cattle with my midgets some years ago, I saw a bull sommer get up and mount a heifer in full view of the other animals. If I’m ever reincarnated, I’m coming back as a bull.
The old geezer is probably pushing 80 and is entitled to give anyone a piece of his mind