When humans are born, they are a bundle of tissue ranging in weight from as much as half a loaf of bread to about half a sack of potatoes. No, I’m not being my usual hyperbolic self. I believe the smallest recorded baby born who ever survived was a Singaporean infant named Kwek Yu Xuan, at an incredible 212g. And I do believe the largest baby ever was a child called Babe, at an impressive 10kg. Of course, Babe was born in the land of the brave, in Ohio to be exact.
That shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows Ohio to be the Buckeye state in Maga land. Buckeye is a decadent peanut butter thinga-macardiac-arrest fudge and for an entire state to be named after a dessert tells one everything one needs to know about its culinary habits. But I digress, as I’m wont to do.
My point is that we’re a pretty diverse species, with sometimes wildly different origins. Just a mere 500 years ago, I would have already surpassed life expectancy by 20 years. And yet, last year the 39th president of the US, Jimmy Carter, shuffled off this mortal coil aged 100. Our own founding father, Madiba, was also chasing a cricket ton when he finally departed aged 95.
Where am I going with this, you ask? Well, one of my dear friends, Nomo Khumalo, turned 50 last week. “Welcome to the wild side, you almost pensioner,” was my message to him on our WhatsApp group. The 50s are an odd decade. For starters, with the exponential increase in life expectancy, we should all be singing in unison that middle age in 2025 starts after 50. I wasted my forties waiting for the crisis to begin; a smattering of babies from Alex to Daveyton maybe, or moving into a red brick one-bedroomed flat in Kempton Park with “an exotic dancer”, surfacing on the news wearing a wet perm during a domestic dispute turned hostage drama.
Being in one’s 50s is really weird. I’m about six years from qualifying for a Sassa old-age card. At the same time, 23-year-old shopping till operators are still flirting with me.
Instead, I wasted my forties being sent on errands to buy bicarbonate of soda, icing sugar, and then staying up until 3am to decorate cupcakes for birthday parties. No silly, cupcakes, the confectionery, not the respectable state president. We were lied to, being hypnotised into believing that we were undergoing a midlife crisis for 10 years when we were just starting to figure out that when people rang the doorbell, asking for “abantu abadala” (the adults or grown-ups in the house), they meant us.
At no point during my development as a young man did anyone warn me that there would ever be a knock on the door and a 12-year-old photocopy of your cousin would appear, requesting to be acknowledged and supported financially. Before you can say: “Child, who is your mother?” there’s a tent outside the home and two dead bovine creatures bought by you.
Being in one’s 50s is really weird. I’m about six years from qualifying for a Sassa old-age card. At the same time, 23-year-old shopping till operators are still flirting with me; “UBaba mina ngingamphekela u-curry omnandi kanjani ngalo brinjal (let me come and cook a brinjal curry for you”). It’s a mindf... Especially when your firstborn is already 30.
Being 50 means that you’re old enough to have grown up in the 1980s with a significant number of men who still harboured a wait-and-see attitude on the wisdom of driving cars. “Ngeke ngithenge ibhokisi lami ngisaphila, Fuze (I’m not purchasing my coffin while I still breathe”). One of my father’s friends said this to him about the folly of driving an automobile in 1985. But I’m starting to realise that, as recently as 1961, I would be sitting outside a thatched rondavel, smoking dagga all day, sending my eight wives and 37 children on errands.
In the very unlikely event that the point of this column has been lost, please allow me the latitude to explain that the number two comes after the number one. Nostalgia. There is an age when Nostalgia starts to be a factor in your daily life.
One of my favourite songs of the past 30 years is Waar was jy? by Skeem, with one of the best vocalists of all time, Ishmael. The refrain on this gem is “o no lekae” (“Where were you”). So I ask you, when actor Ken Gampu was the strongest man in the Land, “o no lekae”? When Mangosuthu Buthelezi carried a short staff, “o no lekae”? When Marcia Turner revolutionised beauty standards, “o no lekae”? When Tap Tap Makhathini demolished Charlie Weir, “o no lekae”?
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