I HAVE NEVER RECEIVED as many happy birthday wishes in all my born days as I had on Thursday when I notched up another year on my age.
From midnight they poured in by landline, cellphone calls and messages, BBM, WhatsApp, email, Facebook, MagicJack, and Skype video calls, Twitter, LinkedIn, Wayn, Instagram and whatever else I use on the Internet.
It looks like just yesterday that I was a tweenager and scared of the numbers ten and 15 because, at age ten, I assumed that at 20 I would be an old man and, by 25, a dinosaur. I, therefore, couldn’t believe the sweetness I was enjoying at 20 and the exhausting intensification of that sweetness with maturity by age 25.
Yet, at 20 I felt pangs of dread about reaching the frightening age of 30, a mere ten years away and, even worse, of being at the ripe old age at 35 and no longer becoming to coke bottle-shaped younger bodies.
So at age 25 I decided that would be my permanent age no matter how much I aged after that. Not even Frank Sinatra singing about when he was 41 it was a very good year or all the old talk about life beginning at 40 could move me from that mindset. I just had no intention of being a 40-year-old cowboy in gunfights with a rusty pistol that backfired more than fired.
Surprisingly, I found that being 30 or 35 made no difference. I was still able to share licks like peas and the improvement brought about by experience created a demand for my pea tree that was simply unbelievable.
Yet, I could not face up to my fast approaching chronological age of 40. I felt like a man riding uphill problem-free without any breaks but nearing the peak, after which everything would be downhill with no brakes.
But then I did reach 40 and found that 41 looked like being also a very good year and I continued to really enjoy life albeit without the wastage of youth. I made mature decisions about life and work became really serious about planning for the future.
That was until it hit me like ten bolts out of the blue that in a mere ten more years I would be 50 with grey hair top and bottom, teeth falling out, six-pack turning to a one-pack tool shed, skin scaling, sight and hearing failing, high blood pressure, diabetes and so on on the horizon. Worse was that at 45 I would have with a mere 15 more years to 60, pension, ID card with red background and the possibility of no longer being able to go into the countryside for cane anymore.
By the time I did reach 50, the world of science had me feeling that 51 would be another very good year. My teeth were still like new with the benefit a few implants, fillings and regular cleanings. Daily tablets kept the pressure and the cholesterol levels in line, and so on.
But the best thing that happened around that time came when a group of men being tested in the US with a new blood pressure lowering drug called sildenafil, refused to return the medication because of a most uplifting side effect they were enjoying. And so Viagra was born.
Today, I am past the age of being worried about life ten or 15 years hence but intent on enjoying every last second.
Al Gilkes heads a public relations firm. Email algilkes@gmail.com
