I am meticulous in my agenda of promoting literacy at all levels, starting as early as a very young child just listening to a story being told. As such, much of what I experience is, at one stage or another, influenced by age: the age of the teller and/or the age of the listener.
This is not my personal attempt at erudition, but an exploration of the notion of age and how it affects the way we experience it.
At the time of writing, our society is sensitive to two religious climates: the Lenten Fast of Christians and the Holy Month of Ramadaan. There are probably other forms of worship or gestures to re-affirm our notion of a powerful Creator who guides us through this one life as preparation for eternal reward after we die. And that, roughly, is the burden of my song. Age.
My religion tells that man’s lifespan is three-score and 10, that is, 70 years. It can go to 80 but those years are not comfortable. I imagine most religions target a number as a normal lifespan.
I wish to touch on the different ways in which we interpret this nebulous notion of age, having just turned 84 myself. Invariably, we add on the word “old” if we speak of age. And, mistakenly, we assume that the old geezers have it all taped in terms of life skills, patience, knowledge, wisdom and all the other traditional epithets and assumptions that influence the way we approach long life.
These days, I get many WhatsApp clips with a geriatric theme. Folks pelt me with the stories, some sedate, some ribald, some even basely irreverent. They tell about how smart the old are.
For instance, a grey couple gets a quote of R150 000 for a car they wish to buy. They are outraged at the price. The next day, they watch a young blonde charm the salesperson into marking it down to R120 000. She pays, turns to the old couple, tosses the keys to them and says: “There you go, grandfather. I told you I could get this bozo to drop his price!” Moral of the story? Don’t underestimate the cunning of the aged.
Then, there is the story of the 80-year-old lady who phones her neighbour to come and help her complete a jigsaw puzzle of a large rooster in her kitchen. The neighbour, in his early forties, goes over, looks at the situation, and calmly explains to her: “No, Grandma, the rooster is a picture on a box. It’s not a jigsaw puzzle. Now let’s put the cereal back in the box.” The moral here? I don’t know. Kindness and patience towards those who are losing it?
Then there are the ones that get my goat. Clips of really old couples doing the jitterbug, performing fantastic acts of litheness, agility, contortion and the miraculous! I even saw one with a phalanx of really old ladies dancing a piece choreographed around their Murray Walkers.
Other digs are thought-provoking, where one old biddy would ask the other: “Am I going up the stairs or am I on my way down? Am I on my way to the kitchen or coming from it?” Funny? Sad? I don’t know. What about the blue-rinsed bejewelled passenger in the large Benz who says to her equally opulent friend: “Blanche, you have just jumped a second red light.” Her friend responds: “Oh my goodness, am I driving?”
I am not sure whether I enjoy these digs at us, old fogeys. All I know is that age is just a number. How you live depends on your attitude, your gratitude, your dignity and your conviction that love and youth are, as the song says, wasted on the young. We have learnt forbearance, and acceptance, we can handle rejection or ridicule.
But please, not cruelty or pity. We don’t need that. We are in the departure lounge, happy to hear our number called when the time comes.
* Alex Tabisher.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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