R.I.P. MIDDLE AGE
Why...
Am I not dressed in grey leather shoes and polyester trousers?
One of the casualties of every generation since the Silent Generation (1935-1950), has been the demise of Middle Age.
Right now, the only limits to me behaving as I did in my youth are physical.
I do not own a tartan coloured shopping trolley with matching tartan booties. I don’t possess a cardigan, a pipe or a jacket with leather elbow pads. Nor, do I endlessly suck on a Werther's Original caramel or have a glass by my bedside for dentures.
Right now, if you take a photo of a group of a hundred people, they may display their own tribal colours but within that tribe, between the ages of 25-65, are actually pretty alike.
Yet when I look at photos of my salad days and at people now my age, they all appear distinctly different to the youth that’s with them. The women are all dressed in ‘A’ line skirts surrounded by Tupperware containers. The men either have a comb-over or a short back and sides haircut, and are in ties and lace up brogues, even on weekends. Folk barely fifteen years younger are in jeans, with varying lengths of hair and a perpetual grin on their faces.
All the middle aged were so different from the youth. They all respected the speed limit and positions of authority. The men shaved every day but the women never did. Married couples were rarely able to travel beyond home shores and certainly never ate food that was not either frozen or a domestic recipe. There was fear of the foreign rather than curiosity. And nearly all had the same job in the same firm all their lives. Sad.
My generation has actually found the secret to eternal youth. Act like you want, not how you should.
I may now wake up with a sixty-year old’s body, but my mind and mannerisms are distinctly those of a thirty-five year old. I ignore that old man as I get in my car for a blast down a country road, work out in a gym or cuddle my beloved wife.
