Fogging up my rose-tinted glasses

It's crisis time when going into the future, the end will always be nearer than the beginning

I have spent the past three and a half years since turning 35 preparing myself and my loved ones for that inevitable moment when my midlife crisis kicks in.

I'd hate to wake up one morning and discover that overnight I'd turned into that 42-year-old with a diamond stud in one ear, perched atop a Harley, my paunch spilling over my tight-fitting leather pants with an 18-year-old clinging on to my back on our way to an orientation week bash at Wits campus. And because I hate surprises, I'm planning meticulously for the moment.

In the last few weeks, two of my oldest friends turned 40 and even I wasn't prepared for the impact of the realisation: "Damn, I'm old!" Yes, turning 40 means that the conversion into an archaeological relic is well underway. Only other fossils clinging desperately to their phantom youths will spew obvious existential fabrications such as "40 is the new 30." No. That's just bad math. Forty is the same 40 it's always been; a turning point signalling that one's life is on a descending slope. And there are all those tell-tale signs that one is on the return leg of the trip up the Kilimanjaro of life.

It's little things such as the attendant at the airport Avis counter addressing me as "Baba". For the linguistically handicapped: when a pretty girl behind a counter calls you "Baba" she means "you're outside my courtship range". It's little things like leaving my house in the morning and remembering that I forgot the nostril irrigation part of my grooming. Yes, those hairs start growing out of your snout circa age 35. It's things like spending an average of 20 minutes daily searching for one's car keys, ultimately finding them in exotic locations such as the sock drawer and next to the potato chips inside the freezer.

One of the fossils who recently turned 40 is a friend of mine with a girly name. So we're on the phone the other day and I can tell by the expletives muttered under his breath that he's frantically searching for something. Finally, I ask him what he's looking for and he responds: "I need to leave the house. My wallet, house and car keys are all in my hand. Now if I can only find my friggin' mobile phone," followed by an uncomfortable silence.

I have, in the past, made the observation that most young people worry about the physical aspects of growing old. That is the height of worrying about all the wrong things. Granted, failing to consume my recommended dietary allowance of fibre at my age could potentially land me inside a Netcare facility with a butch nurse strapping on rubber gloves behind me. I have also realised that, at my age, I have lost full functionality of some of my glands. My wife dragged me to the cinema to watch some flick called My Sister's Keeper. I'm ashamed to report that about 20 minutes into this mediocre piece of cinematic arbitrariness my tear ducts were overflowing worse than those of a Sicilian widow in a B-grade Mafia movie.

However, the most corrosive effects of growing older are in the less tangible aspects of daily existence. For instance, people my age have been known to go out in public clad in items of clothing constructed from dangerous materials such as 100% polyester, corduroy and towel socks. A former high-school mate of mine still leaves his house sporting that "short on the sides, long on top" hairdo made popular by Dolph Lundgren in Rocky III. This is because when you get to my age, you tend to find solace in your past. Going through my extensive music collection, I made a startling discovery - all my favourite musicians are either dead or being force-fed Jungle Oats in a retirement village somewhere.

On average, my favourite musicians last had a Top 10 hit the year PW Botha signed the Nkomati Accord. And that Top 10 show was presented by Karl Kikillus on Pop Shop. It's taken me a while to understand why this is. You see, when we reach the midpoint of our lives, there is the realisation that going into the future the end will always be nearer than the beginning. So we spend most of our time looking back at our past - through rose-tinted glasses.

In simple terms, when you turn 40, you become your parents. A few days ago I found myself standing outside a hotel room in the Vaal, sweat pouring out of my pores having spent the previous five minutes shagging a slot on the door with one of those cards in an attempt to access my room. Despite having opened hundreds of such doors, I found myself yelling: "'God, I miss keys!"

I have uttered those very words many times walking behind a youngster with a skateboard and pants around his knees at the mall: "God, I miss belts!" And at that moment the truth hit me, until my midlife crisis truly kicks in, I have turned into a boring old fart.