Adult-lescence

A few weird things have been happening to me lately that have made me stop and take stock – namely the Myer Boxing Day Stocktake Sale, but I’ll get to the heavily discounted trousers in a moment.

It all started early last year when I was running on the beach in Byron – I’d seen a particularly churlish crab. As I looked back over my shoulder to see if it was still doing that thing with its leg, I had to hold my hand up to look into the sun. I suddenly noticed that the hand I front of me was not my own – it was my father’s. Those thick fingers, those wide nails, the sticky-out bluish veins. I remember tracing those calloused lines on the palm with my fingers as a kid, and pinching and posing the inelastic skin on the back of his knuckles. They’re mine now. Has it been that long? Am I that old?

I should have noticed earlier. The signs were always there, and most of those signs were sounds. I make a noise for nearly every task these days. Even stuff as simple as getting out of a chair - I give a breathy ‘hup!’, as if I’m catapulting an acrobat onto a trapeze. There’s even a noise I make after the physically challenging act, like a self-congratulatory grunt/wheeze thing.
‘Job well done, old man. You stood up. Now try to get to the bathroom without pissing yourself.’

My concentration is shot too. There was a time in high school where I could be doing maths problems, talking to my friends and listening to the teacher all at once, without any difficulty. I took great pleasure, when the teacher snapped around and said “What have I been saying?”, in regurgitating her words verbatim. Petulant little shit I shall be no longer. If I am in a room with someone having a conversation, I can’t hear that person if I am looking at the TV. Sound up, sound down – it doesn’t really matter. The amount of brain power required to decipher images is all the brain power I’ve got. Aim it wisely, you doddering old twat.

So I’m old – that’s what it boils down to. But what I can’t get my head around is what that actually means. I still treat my life as I did when I was 19. In the meantime have gone and done some really ‘adult’ things (and I don’t mean anything sexual – we’ll cross that bridge…) – these were things I really didn’t handle in an adult manner. How much more of my life will I squander away in this adult-lescence?

It has been said that life is basically the process of reconciling the lofty perception that you have of yourself with what everybody else actually thinks about you. It’s part of that whole you-are-what-you-project / you-are-but-a-reflection-of-your-surroundings debate… if there is one… I may have just made that up. I believe all three of these premises to be true. I also believe in manatees, profanities and fairy-winkles.

I AM as self-centred as everyone says I am – though it seems selfish to draw attention to it. I get stuck so far down inside myself that nothing ever gets out. I stew on petty decisions until they become irrelevant, or I take rash and abrasive action and call it ‘seizing the day’. I should probably just call it ‘rash and abrasive action’ – that’d clear up a whole bunch of shit.

I look back on all the ‘progress’ I’ve made over the year and realise I’ve been treading water. I look back on all the water treading I’ve been doing and realise that I’m very quickly running out of breath. Who wants to fish an old guy out of the pool and administer CPR? Even if he is wearing a fashionable pair of heavily discounted trousers from the Myer Stocktake Sale.