Page 16 - IFV Issue 11 November 2023

Estate News

THE THREE MIDDLE AGES

BY JAMES CLARKE

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

14 • Issue 11 2023 • The Villager