'Old age was sitting in my wardrobe in a blue box:' Bernard O'Shea on turning 40

I turned 40 and suddenly swapped my jeans and trainers for chinos and shoes — and sandals!

Mon, 02 Nov, 2020 - 13:15

Bernard O'Shea

I’m beginning to think a tiny incendiary device went off in my head on 25 March 2019 when I turned 40.

Two weeks later, Lorna asked me, in an almost worried tone, ‘Why are you wearing khakis again? You’re wearing a lot of beige these days — that’s going to stain quickly.’ She had a point. I noticed that I’d stopped wearing jeans. I didn’t consciously decide to do it, it just happened.

I once read that the brain and body have something called cannabinoid receptors in them. They can control the flow of pain and are loosely related to the cannabis plant. Research has led scientists to think that maybe the drug could be useful in the treatment of Alzheimer’s. Is it possible that when a male brain hits 40, there is some synaptic transmission that lures it towards beige trousers, ultimately restricting the memory of his youth when he could fit into jeans? Essentially, am I stoned on comfort?

It wasn’t only jeans though. I started exclusively wearing shoes, having worn trainers up to that point. I’d started wearing chinos because they were smarter, with the added benefit of being comfortable, but I’d stopped wearing sneakers, even though they are comfortable too! Like a virus, it spread. Within months, I was buying jumpers. Not fashionable ones … warm ones, of the type I used to buy for my dad at Christmas with a diamond pattern on them.

But then something atrocious happened, something that raised alarm bells in all directions. On a family holiday in Kerry just four months later, I would wear (please look away now if squeamish) SANDALS WITH SOCKS. Before you judge me and call the relevant authorities, there was a reason for my grievous sartorial error. I had bought a pair of what I thought to be fashionable Birkenstocks the week previously – just in case there would be 25 to 30 minutes of sunshine that July in Ireland. I thought I’d be able to throw on the sandals, roll up my chinos, and look cool ambling along some windswept beach. I know my pale, overweight, flabby, ginger look does not now, nor did it ever, lend itself to me ‘looking cool’; nor is it possible that sandals can be ‘fashionable’, but the older I get, the more I notice I have begun to believe advertising.

When you are young, you are more cynical, or at least I was. Half the advertisements on TV were never intended for the teenage me: cars, mortgages, free-finance couches. But now, I find they’re not for the adult me either. Most advertisements are not for people who have to sit down to put on their socks. They’re for people who have aspirations. My problem is that I’m mentally fit enough to aspire; I’m just not physically fit enough.

Recently I’ve noticed that if an advertisement promises to give me back my youth, I believe it. So, when I was in the shoe shop, I saw a poster of a man throwing his child into the air on a beach. He was wearing a white herringbone shirt, buttoned-down, with a smart pair of tailored Bermuda shorts. He had thick salt-and-pepper hair. He was tanned and had a jawline that could carry two shopping bags. He looked like a guy who earns a fortune with an offshore investment bank but also volunteers at his local hospital as a doctor, putting his medical degree to use. He doesn’t care what he’s wearing as he throws his child into the Caribbean sunset, because he is wearing a pair of Birkenstocks.

I looked at it and thought, ‘That’s me.’ I have never walked my kids down a beach and flung them in the air, simply because they are usually covered in white, asbestos-like Factor 70 sun cream to stop them from burning, but nevertheless, I thought, that could be me. I bought them and walked out of the shop thinking, ‘I will lose 20kg by next week and I will look like a goddam DILF.’ For those not familiar with the acronym DILF, it means ‘Dad I Would Like to F##k’. Bar two major banking institutions and a dislocated kneecap, the ‘F’ part of DILF has never been a major part of my life. I’m more of a DILY, as in, ‘Dad, I Would Like a Yogurt,’ or as my wife calls me, a ‘DILMFBFU’ or, ‘Dad I Would Like to Murder for Being F##King Useless.’ However, there I was, walking home with a brown leather dual-strapped pair of men’s sandals.

That night, as I lay in bed watching YouTube videos on how to fall asleep, I realised I had never, up until that day, felt the need to buy sandals. Most holidays, I’d wear my shoes or runners. If I was on a beach, I’d just go barefoot. So why did I need a pair of sandals? It dawned on me that I needed sandals because I wanted to have my cake and eat it. I wanted to be the DILF on the beach, but also wanted comfort. I knew if comfort was the compromise, then style was my demise. Like wearing the jumpers and chinos, my newfound foot fetish had more to do with my inability to move than my desire to be the guy in the Birkenstocks ad.

I started to say over and over again in my head, 'You just bought old age'. It was true.

Old age was sitting in my wardrobe in a blue box. In fact, during the last four months, I had purchased a compendium of doddering-geriatric rags. The sandals were the icing on the retirement-home cake. I knew there and then why men my age buy sports cars and have affairs: it’s not because they are selfish, it’s because they come home one day and realise that in their choice of wardrobe, they have effectively made arrangements for their funerals. That night I left the death sandals hanging off the inside of the front door. It’s what I do if I absolutely have to remember to bring something with me before I leave the house. It drives my wife mental. This also helps me to remember her usual shout: ‘Bernard, for the last time, stop hanging your crap on the door.’ That morning the kids got to them first. Tadhg was wearing them around the house. ‘I told you, stop hanging your crap off the door,’ Lorna said, followed by ‘Why did you buy sandals?’ I looked at the kids playing with them, like a cat plays with a dead mouse, and checked to see if they had ripped the tags off … they had. ‘Well, I’m keeping them now.’ ‘Why did you buy them, Daddy?’ Olivia asked. ‘I bought them for our holiday next week.’ Lorna took one look at them and said, ‘They are nice’. I was actually shocked. ‘Are you taking the piss? I was going to bring them back. Do you not think I’m a bit too young for them?’ ‘They are sandals, Bernard, how can you be too young for sandals?’ She was right – they were just sandals.

After the kids had finished using them as hunting practice, I threw them into the boot of the car. As I did, I noticed the assortment of shoes that had built up in my boot over the years, mostly associated with failure. There were my eye-wateringly expensive hiking boots, then my waterproof trail running shoes that I’d ordered online two years before. I do not go trail running. I had a pair of brand-new state-of-the-art stabilising lightweight marathon shoes that I’d bought four years before in order to train for the Dublin City Marathon. I did not do the Dublin City Marathon. Then I found a pair of golf shoes still in their box. I did not pick up golf. My Astroturf football boots that I got to play football every Wednesday night? Well, I’d played twice, and that was six, maybe seven, years ago. I have not played football since. A pair of CrossFit shoes? I went for a month. Finally, I came across a pair of tennis shoes. I did not learn how to play tennis and, more embarrassingly, had no recollection of ever buying them. They were like a round of drink you buy at the end of the night. I had a shoe to represent every get-fit-quick scheme that I’d cultivated in my lazy, waterlogged brain. Now, for the first time in years, I threw footwear into my boot that I knew I would wear. Depressing but achievable.