Don't worry, old age happens to everyone

In the so-called developed world, there has been a dramatic shift in natality vs mortality graphs in the past 200 years or so. In plain English, fewer people are being born while people are progressively living longer.

If this trend continues, by the time my grandkids are adults there will be towns in North America, Scandinavia and Western Europe where sexagenarians will be considered middle-aged.

People living well past 100 will become commonplace. Their malls will be packed with 30-something "adolescents" on Saturday afternoons.

Already, people are waiting until much later in life to start families, a case in point being one Janet Jackson, who popped her first at age 50.

There is so much obsession about age and immortality in those parts of the world that in the US, they even have a body called the National Institute on Aging that has, among its tasks, the duty to pat that nation on the back for achieving such high life expectancies.

Meanwhile, back here on the "developing" world ranch, the graphs look a little different. We're still popping them babies out faster than you can say "pull-out method", while simultaneously dying much younger. Just the way nature intended.

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A high-school mate, Siphiwe, celebrated his very first nuptials in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal, two weekends ago. At age 42. How Scandinavian of him. It occurred to me that a mere half-century ago this would have been unheard of. In 1960, by age 42 a man would probably have been celebrating his silver wedding anniversary, with six or seven of his grandkids on his lap.

This got me thinking: the World Health Organisation's main thrust is to achieve exactly this trend in the "developing" world. When we're also making fewer babies and living till the age of 120, and regular nookie among octogenarians has become humdrum, the WHO will release a triumphant report and pop open a bottle of bubbly. I bet the ANC Youth League president of that era will be 58 years old and Oros will be vindicated.

This is a bit of a brain bash for me. At an intellectual level, I totally get it. I think. I guess my internal dissonance stems from the fact that this goes against everything I've been told.

Earlier this year I turned 45. In my paradigm, this has always meant that one is closer to the grave than the cradle.

Let's go back to the assembly of high-school peers from 30 years ago who congregated in Newcastle two weeks ago. All the telltale signs that the end might be nearer than the beginning were there.

Thirty years ago some of these folks were prime athletes in peak physical condition. They could run the 100m dash in under 11 seconds.

I met one these formerly fine physical specimens at breakfast the morning after the party. He was complaining loudly about the pain in his quads. What happened? Did you wake up and complete a 20km jog while we slept, I quizzed. "No, when the deejay said 'Get down' while the song Fantasy by Blackbox was playing, I took him literally and squatted three times," he offered with defeat in his voice.

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All the other signs that the WHO might be fighting a losing battle were also there. Most of us were carrying at least 20kg of luggage around our waists like a badge of shame that our peers hadn't been introduced to 30 years ago. As the sun bathed our heads and whiskers around the breakfast table, I counted 50 shades of grey. The whites of our eyes - not so white any more.

Gravity had taken its toll on cheeks, earlobes, pectoral muscles, gluteus maxima and possibly brain function. Well, at least my brain. As usual, it wasn't too long before we got stuck into a heated debate about something or the other. All I remember is that it was about subjects I know dangerously little about.

It had to do with Professor Chris Malikane, the economy, the best approach towards achieving radical economic transformation, how Brexit will affect the EU, the pros and cons of being part of Brics, China, Venezuela and Cuba.

As regular readers of this column can appreciate, I was completely out of my depth. But as I have often pointed out, intelligent people discussing something I know nothing about is a red flag for me. So I dove into the deep end of the intellectual pool with my customary gusto, armed only with murky, disjointed titbits gleaned from half-read articles in the Financial Mail while waiting for the dentist.

At some point I managed to shout louder than everyone else until they were all listening only to me. And that's when it happened. Mid-sentence, I totally forgot what point I was making. I frantically scraped the bottom of my cranial barrel for a morsel of sense but nothing was forthcoming. In a panic, I strung together a meaningless sentence, peppered with weighty phrases such as "inclusive growth" and "infrastructure development", as my voice tapered down to a whisper.

The funny thing is that no one looked at me judgmentally. All I saw was sympathy in their eyes.

That's because, at our age, it happens to everyone.

• Follow the author of this article, Ndumiso Ngcobo, on Twitter: @NdumisoNgcobo