It takes a lot of effort to grow old this disgracefully
When I sent James Wolfaardt, the illustrator for this column, the brief of what I’m tackling this week, he sent me an immediate response. “I get it. I still dress like I did when I was 30 years old, but completely by default. I’ll still be in camo pants in my 70s.”
I had just told him about my visit to the Discovery vaccination site in Gallagher Estate to get my 5G implant to complete my transformation into Bill Gates’s zombie. The first question I was asked was whether I was over the age of 50 or not. That got me thinking. Is there a way of telling how old someone is, without asking for their ID number?
Standing in that queue, I was able to spot the under-40s right away.
The trick is to ignore faces and form. Some 36-year-olds could pass for 57 with little effort. It’s all in the garb. People tend to dress their age. But it’s also in their mannerisms and other little quirks. For instance, if you see someone dressed like they’re just trying too hard, there’s a very simple explanation. They are in the 36-to-39 range and hyperventilating about reaching 40. They’re still delusional about the fact that it’s over for them. The extreme hairstyles: sides totally bald and colourful crowns. Brightly coloured eyewear. Shoes that belong to a futuristic movie depicting a postapocalyptic reality in the year 3036. The orange headphones. Listen buddy, we can see through you. You’re 38 but that’s no reason to look like a scarlet macaw on ecstasy. I personally stopped trying to seem cool around the 2010 Fifa World
Cup.
People think that looking like a boring, middle-aged father of four with life policies from three separate insurers who only knows oral sex from Pornhub is a natural state. They are wrong. It takes a lot of effort to look like a 40-something-old loser.
I have the recipe and I’m about to share it.
Your shoes: stop pretending that you did not watch that epic Wimbledon final between Ivan
Lendl and Boris Becker in 1986 or the Martina Navratilova vs Chris Evert version. Be honest now, those adidas, Puma or, Lord forbid, Slazenger sneakers are still your benchmark when you go hunting for comfortable footwear. And I saw a lot of those takkies in the queue at Gallagher Estate. There’s no point in asking those folks how old they are. Just tick the 45-plus box and move the queue right along.
Frumpy sweatpants: nothing screams, “I’ve given up on life” quite like retail chain sweatpants. And I’m not talking about those “f**kboy” sweatpants that are loose from the waist until the knees and then taper down to trim legs. You’re not auditioning for a Pharrel Williams music video. You’re a 47-year-old with four kids, a minus R213,000 credit card balance and two lawsuits from former business partners. Look like it, damn it!
The hiking jacket: this is an essential, if you’re over 45. The younger moms at the school bake sale can suck on your third stomach if they don’t understand why any sane woman would wear a grey hiking jacket, complete with matching beanie.
The ugly hat: that last point segues beautifully into this one. Find the most ludicrous headwear within your reach. I have a hat so horrendously ugly that even Frank Gallagher from Shameless would deem it too shameful to wear. I wear it for two reasons: because it’s so comfortable but also as a form of protest when the woman who professes to love me drags me out of the house against my will.
The butt ugly phone cover: at 00h01 on your 40th birthday, your priorities change. Protecting your primary communication device (that’s a phone, for the benefit of under 35s) becomes very important. Why? Because we’re going to milk that insurance we’re paying every month, at every opportunity we get. So, we better get the sturdiest, most visually unappealing cover for that device.
I’m at the back end of my 40s. This has been, by far, the best decade of my life. From what I hear, the 50s are even better. I’ll be there in a few months. I can’t wait.
From what I’m told, in those circles, flatulence is not even called that. It’s referred to as “belching from the waist”.
Listen buddy, we can see through you. You’re 38 years old but that’s no reason to look like a scarlet macaw on ecstasy