Page 28 - Dainfern Precinct Living Issue 10_2023

Humour

THE THREE

MIDDLE AGES

BY JAMES CLARKE
how you discover you are going
bald from behind.
Men begin reading articles about
impotence, all the way to the end.
LATE MIDDLE AGE
LMA is when small children call
you "grandpa" (I trained mine to
call me "Sir") and your hair grows
where it never grew before - even
between your eyebrows - and
disappears elsewhere. The freckles
on your hands, you realise, are
actually liver spots.
You settle on a brand of scotch.
Your collar size is suddenly 17 and
you no longer bother to check
yourself when you say "In my
day..."
heard the word ‘mediatrics’ an attractive young woman You involuntarily wag your finger
mentioned the other day. rattling a charity collection tin and, when you make a point.
I’d heard of ‘paediatrics’ as she had nice legs, I dug into my
I pertaining to the health care pocket for a Rix dollar or two - or Presidents and Prime Ministers are
of little kids, and ‘geriatrics’ as a whatever the currency was in suddenly absurdly young - and so
description for elderly people. But those days. are airline pilots and your own GP.
mediatrics? Contemporaries, whom you knew
She said: "Dankie, oom!" at school, and whom you recall as
Mediatrics, I found, is a term I smote the forehead. “Oom”? It brain-dead, are now being quoted
invented by H.F. Ellis half-a- was my first collision with middle on television and in newspapers.
century ago in an article in Punch, age. I’d become an oom overnight
the British humour magazine. It yet I was not yet 40 and still had You begin to wonder, halfway
pertained to middle age people all my own teeth. through a story, whether you
between 35 and 60. Ellis, a have already told it to that
schoolmaster, borrowed the Another early sign: your children same person. You might even
classification system invented begin to doubt your intelligence begin carrying a walking stick at
by Sir Arthur Evans, the Crete and argue with you about weekends because it gives you a
archaeologist. Evans, when bedtimes and start to talk about certain dignity and because, when
discussing the Minoan civilisation, friends of the opposite sex walking in the neighbourhood, you
coined the historical terms Early without blushing. can prod disagreeable things, like
Middle Age (EMA), Middle Middle strangers.
Age (MMA) and Late Middle Age MIDDLE MIDDLE AGE
(LMA). He suggested the same MMA is when your children You pretend to manifest
terms could be adopted by the have already decided you are premature ageing when,
health care professions and that ancient and talk to you as if you rising from a chair, you groan
there was a need for mediatricians were a turnip. You compensate exaggeratedly - jokingly of course.
specialising in mediatrics. by becoming ever so slightly In reality, you know perfectly well
pompous. You start saying, slowly you cannot do it without groaning.
Having been through the different and with emphasis, "mark my
stages of middle age myself, I words" as if history will one day You begin considering, very briefly,
feel it is my duty to issue health respectfully quote you. signing on at a gym or joining Walk
warnings to readers over 35. You also have difficulty stopping for Life.
yourself from saying "in my day..."
EARLY MIDDLE AGE "In my day we had to walk You find yourself, more and
I recall my own EMA experience. 10 km to school and we came more frequently, singing “Happy
It was over Christmas at St Francis under the lash if five minutes birthday” to small children and
Bay. One had to shop in nearby late.” you have to ask who they are
Humansdorp in those days which One day, you absent-mindedly and people explain they are your
is what I was doing when I spotted scratch your head and wince – it’s grandchildren.

28 DPL issue 10 2023