Getting old is weird
2012-09-04 07:58
David Moseley
I remember buying my first couch, a sprawling brown dust collector that was home to numerous bottoms over the years, and thinking how truly mature and grown up I was for performing this rite of adulthood. Instead of splashing my 13th cheque that year on another pair of garish boardhsorts and a bakkie-load of spirits I bought a couch. “This is it,” I thought at the time, “in lieu of any mountains to conquer, bears to skin or branches to whittle into chess pieces, I am now a grown man.”
How wrong I was. And how depressed I now find myself after this weekend’s events, because getting old and truly becoming an adult is a weird and shocking experience.
We recently installed new windows into our home. Out with the old, rotten wooden panes and in with the new, glistening aluminium models. My new windows are double-glazed. They’re smooth and snug when closed now. They even open when I want them to open and not when they feel like it because they’ve swollen in the rain. What’s more, all this excited me.
When the builders left I marched proudly around my house, beaming with the confused satisfaction of someone who’s just spent all his (fiancée's) money on making a hole in the wall. “Look at these wonderful windows,” I said to Bovril the cat. “Just look at them. Aren’t they smashing?” Meow, he said in return.
His owners were more impressed. As was the rest of our small housing complex. “Ooh, I love your windows,” neighbours cooed as they drove past. Yes, yes. Aren’t they marvellous? Do come in and I’ll take your photo next to them. You can send it to your friends and family.
How? How did this happen, how can I be so ecstatic about six new windows? What’s more, I keep popping round to my most direct neighbour, in the guise of borrowing stuff or asking stupid questions about DStv, just to keep an eye on their renovations. Sure, they might have better kitchen cupboards right now, but my windows are the best. The BEST!
But I don’t want to love my windows. I don’t want to get old and suburban. What’s left after windows anyway? Will I start longing for tiles of Italian descent, like that clown in the CTM ads of years gone past? Will I sit down at dinner parties in months to come and purr about faucets and excellent new plumping systems, or shower doors and carpeting?
It’s all so incredibly confusing, this love for my windows. I want to long for Xboxes and fancy sneakers. But I don’t. I don’t even care about going to the larny shops in my tracksuit pants anymore. All I care about are my windows. It’s so weird, man.
What the hell happened?
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