Getting a handle on the ageing process

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

The maths may not be quite on the button but in round figures we seem to spend the first half of our lives trying to be older – and the second half trying to pretend we’re not as old as we are.

Think back to your first memories as a child, when an adult asked you what age you were.

“Three and a quarter,” might be the answer – and the quarter was critical because it lifted you above the level of the mere three years old.

Five and a half, six and three-quarters….all important quarterly dates on the road to another year.

Then you became a teenager and you lied with great extravagance – particularly when it came to getting into over-18 movies or getting served in pubs.

You can only look back now with mortification on the little tyke who had shaded in the bum fluff on their upper lip with a pencil – or, in our case, the brown phosphorous from the head of a match – to give the impression of greater growth in an area as devoid of it as the Sahara Desert.

So you wanted to be 18 from the time you were 14 – and then when you hit 18, you wanted to be 21.

But now you’ve arrived; once you look your age and can get into clubs without flashing your tattered passport, the world is a beautiful place for a while.

And then – just as you’re getting used to your perfect age profile – the big three-o comes bounding over the horizon.

But no matter….life is still good and you make jokes about thirty being the new twenty-one and you celebrate a little too forcefully which only serves to indicate that the tide is beginning to turn.

Still, you don’t have much time to deliberate on lying about your years because the chances are you have kids and a mortgage to pay for – crèche collects, football and/or ballet practise to pencil into the equation.

In other words, for these hectic years you’re too busy to worry about what age you are.

And yet the first roots are beginning to plant themselves – ironically often starting with the roots… the roots of your hair and a small drop of brown or black to keep the grey away.

You also don’t talk as much about age anymore; birthdays aren’t marked and your age is vaguely passed off as ‘in my thirties’.

Some celebrate being 40, if they’re surrounded by childhood friends who all know what age they are anyway – because they’re the same age – and it’s all a bit of crack but heading over the halfway line now and into the golden years.

The ladies tend to keep these things low key – and I can still remember a friend of mine in Athlone who surprised his shy and retiring wife on her fortieth by hiring their all-time favourite singer and booking a top restaurant for them and around 100 friends.

I can still see the look on her face when the surprise was sprung – and it was less thanks than pure thunder.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.