Age is just a number.
My sister’s 18th birthday
Victorious, the girls returned to their quiet domiciles after a day of raucous feasting and revelry. In other words, they had fun at my sister’s birthday party and were now tired. Their tired was tired.
Dirtied by the concrete benches and talking over one another about the excitement of the day surely certified this experience as one for the Gram.
The strange thing about chaperoning a gang of teenage girls is that you occasionally must betray your age. Two incidents stick out for me.
Thirty what?
The first involves our registration for laser tag. One of the girls was running late (apparently a chronic family trait). We were stuck concerning what to do in the meantime. I promptly shot down a weak proposal that I join one of the laser tag teams as a proxy (to even them out).
Mapaseka* asked for her phone which lay on the opposite side of the wooden bench. Her exact words were “would you please pass me my cellular device?”
Both the business owner and I burst out laughing. Apparently this Benjamin Button of a child makes other archaic and quirky references in class too. The teachers have learned to ignore her shenanigans. She even pronounces time as teemeh because… reasons.
The owner asked if we should use the puh-honeh (p-hone) to call and find out how far the last team member was. It took us a minute to get her joke.
She laughed and motioned to the other girls around the table, “you’re going to remember that in your thirties.” I blurted out, “I am in my thirties and I remember that!”
She responded, “are you the dad?” My best reply was, “for all intents and purposes, yes.”
I felt old.
The Good Ol’ Days
When the girls had wrapped up laser warfare, we headed back to the car. In the parking lot a child no older than ten years old sported a haircut that drew the ire of one of our group.
She chuckled and pointed, asking what on earth the child had done to his scalp. He had already walked past us and the back of his head was bald. She exclaimed, “wait for him to turn around!”
I knew where this was going.
From our vantage point I can tell you he had no hair on the back of his head, or on the sides. We could only see so far on the top of his head but that was bald too. A regular chiskop wouldn’t evoke such an emotive response. I whispered, Ronaldo!
Sure enough, a moment later my suspicions were confirmed. The child turned his head to look right and — on the top of his head — almost dangling on the edge of his forehead, sat a lush patch of hair, seemingly divorced from the rest of his scalp. It even had a fade!
The girls couldn’t believe a barber would do that to a child. Wasn’t it considered child abuse?
I asked them, “where were you in 2002? You guys weren’t even a twinkle in your parents’ eyes. That hairstyle is older than you!”
We googled ‘Ronaldo 2002’ and the image results were met with a burst of uncontrolled laughter.
For those still lost: the striking football legend nicknamed O Fenômeno (The Phenomenon) arrived at the 2002 FIFA World Cup with a grooming choice that stole the headlines. The original number 9 brandished hair at the front of his head and nowhere else.
I joke that it epitomised some arb modernist philosophy of forward movement that propelled him to score eight goals to clinch the hard-won trophy for Brazil.
A wave of soccer-loving fans adopted the fashion and for the next couple of years, schoolyard games had changed. This prepubescent boy was two decades late to the party, but I guess he felt a little retro on his trip to that salon.
Fun fact: Ronaldo Nazario actually apologised to “all the mothers” whose children adopted his marketing gimmick solely intended to distract the media from his lingering knee injury that year.
What strikes me is how fashionable footballing hairstyles were overtaken by CR7, who those of us old enough to remember created confusion in his use of the name Ronaldo. “We few, we happy few,” have seen the real Ronaldo at work.
In our younger years, we differentiated them by affectionately calling our hero Fat Ronaldo. With time, that moniker became less tasteful, or perhaps we just grew up.
Now we differentiate the two thusly: Ronaldo (R9) and Cristiano (CR7).
I vividly remember the experience (of watching Buffon and Oliver Kahn, Ronaldinho and Klose) which outdated my present company. I goaded them with the question once more, “Where were you in 2002? Waar was jy?!”
Young at heart
I still qualify for the youth league, and will still be surveyed as a member of the (capital-Y) Youth, but that day reminded me of how old I can be in the right company. But age is just a number.
It’s beautiful how many decades of life I’ve lived and yet how much more I still have to go (God-willing). Muslims would here utter “alhamdulillah” (“God be thanked and/or praised”).
I loved hanging out with a generation that introduced me to some good music and had me giggling incessantly like a teenage girl.
I hope my sister keenly remembers these moments in her life. They’re what make life worth living.
Disclaimer
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the underage ladies.
A hearty thanks to the parents for lending me their precious ones to make my sister’s wish come true.
