Séamas O'Reilly: I've become less mature as I grow older
Séamas O'Reilly. Picture: Orfhlaith Whelan
Since I wrote about death last week, it makes sense to work backwards to its most common cause. Aging isn’t something I really think about that often, except when I realise that it has happened to me. I have traditionally been a baby-faced sort of person – meaning, specifically, that I’ve looked younger than I am, as opposed to being one of those people who actually have baby’s faces. You know the type, the small features of an infant set inside a big doughy head that is slightly too large to accommodate them without comment. Junior ministers, trainee priests, that kind of thing.
“You don’t look 30!” people used to say to me, when I was thirty, and I used to take this as a badge of honour before I realised I was simply the only man they knew who still shaved every day. There’s also the fact that, as the last few penurious months has shown, a strangely large number of my friends are a bit older than I am.
As a 36-year-old who has had a dozen or so 40ths to go to this year alone, I’m starting to think that, rather than possessing some mysterious fountain of youth, I am merely surrounded by the coterie of twisted, gnarled, liver-spotted crones to whom I am socially attached.
When I was growing up, it was easy to tell who was old and who was not. Every man over the age of about 19 was well on the way to having a beer belly and crow’s feet. By 40, they cast the silhouette of a pantomime dame, and wore suit trousers and leather shoes to work even if they were farmers.
A universal diet of mince and stout meant they all had arses you could play handball against, and hands like ham-coloured baseball mitts. Anyone over 60 was, basically, a time travelling mystic from eras unknown, their face lined like the Indian railway, their white hair stained yellow from a life-time spent sitting in smoke-filled pubs, and living in homes constructed entirely from asbestos. People over 80 never came up, because we didn’t know any. Can’t think why.
Nowadays, I know people in their seventies that run marathons, people of all ages who eat vegetables, and nobody who wears a suit on a regular basis. The guys who sell you suits in suit shops don’t even wear suits, and I’ve worn trainers to the last half dozen weddings I’ve attended. In fact, I spend most of my life wearing, basically, the same shorts, t-shirt and trainer combo as my four-year old son. This, too, has only strengthened my false belief that I was forever young, one that I now find tested.
For me, it’s the slow smattering of white overtaking the red hair at my temples, which might make other people look distinguished but makes me look like one of those Scottie dogs people refuse to put down, the type that have no idea what’s going on and need a little wheeled cart to get around. Barbers started asking if they could cut my eyebrows a few years ago, now they don’t even bother and attack my burgeoning face antlers before they even touch the rest of my hair.
Perhaps the number one sign of my advancing years is that I now buy alcohol in shops unremarked. Back when I was thirty, I took a great deal of smugness from the fact I was routinely ID’d at supermarket cashiers when buying wine. You might say I still would be, if I hadn’t bought so much wine in the intervening six years but that is none of your business.
Either way, I realised last week that it hadn’t happened in a while. Now, when the beep goes off, I barely get a glance as the attendant approaches, his hands a blur of touchpad jiu-jitsu, safe in the knowledge that the man in front of him is no child.
Each time I resolve to return better moisturised, and even more freshly shaven, perhaps wearing a big frilly bonnet and licking an oversized lollipop, to get my self-esteem back on track.
I’ll be 37 in a few weeks, which I know isn’t old, but does mean I’m past the age where I’d be considered young to do anything. I’d be just about “young” to be a football manager, or a bishop, or Taoiseach, or the musical director of a symphony orchestra. Conversely, I’m considered old – or, worse fate of all, “brave” – to learn to drive, take swimming classes, or begin that modelling career I’ve put off all this time.
When asked if I feel old, I don’t really know. Occasionally I meet pensioners who say they still feel 19 inside, and I can confirm that I do not feel that myself. I make noises when I get out of chairs and my limbs click at the bendy parts. I am constantly tired and regard back pain as one of my oldest, and dearest, friends. I should be clear, I speak not of becoming more mature. Sure, I’ve long ago crossed the threshold where I identify way more with the parents in teen sitcoms than the protagonists, but that’s just common sense.
And, yes, many prospects which once delighted me, like going to music festivals or leaving the house for any reason not mandated by a doctor or magistrate, now leave me profoundly cold. But, such quibbles aside, I’ve arguably become less mature as I’ve grown older. I eat garbage, read comics, and having a son has basically freed me to pursue, professionally, my passion for poo jokes.
Perhaps this, and not my shaving routine, is the secret to eternal youth. I’ll leave the marathons to everyone else, keep up the vegetables, and maintain my fondness for wine. If you’ll excuse me, I have to dash to the shops. Now, where did I put that lollipop?
