The thing about age

At a party in Accra a while ago, I asked a young lady for a dance. She obliged.

We danced until my face glistened with rivulets of sweat and my heart was pumping overtime.

I felt young, I felt terrific and I felt on top of the world as my heart pumped in its ribcage.

And then she started a slow motion dance movement of going down on her knees. Keen to prove I was young at heart, I met her movements with a similar journey downwards.

Quick as a flash, she started the trip upwards.

I tried to dance up.

Big mistake.

That is when my true age came to light.

It became clear I would need a mechanical hoist to get me back standing up. My knee joints burned, as if six-inch nails had been driven through my kneecaps.

The ‘good old days’

It seems like only yesterday when I was at the apex of my youthful years, full of energy, with the concept of pension a distant one parked safely in the farthest recesses of my mind.

These were the heady eighties into the nineties, the era of ‘The Great Embassy Double Do’ with the evergreen Kwesi Kyei Darkwa as MC, and local musical stars such as Ben Brako, Charles Amoah and Akwasi Ampofo Adjei (a.k.a The Shining Star).

Indian and Chinese movies were the rage, and Osofo Dadzie, Showcase and others dominated our TV screens.

On the international scene, I remember Madonna’s ‘Holiday’, Lionel Ritchie’s ‘All Night Long’, Michael Jackson's 'Thriller', Musical Youth’s ‘Pass The Dutchie…’ and other such hits of the eighties and my eyes glisten and moisten with nostalgia at a glorious age gone by.

Then there was the revolution when Chairman JJ’s face was the first that appeared on the news every night and GBC was the only TV station in the land, beginning broadcasting at 5.30 p.m and closing at 11 p.m.

Regular dusk to dawn curfews in the early days of the revolution meant Ghanaians had to be indoors at 6 p.m for 12 hours and dared not even play loud music in their own rooms after that time.

I remember the ‘Rawlings Chain’, the name given to the protruding collar bone that many Ghanaians sported during the early years of the revolution, when a severe drought, food and petrol shortages, bush fires and a mass deportation of one million Ghanaians from Nigeria constituted our lot.

Democracy and free speech were expensive luxuries one could only dream of.

Middle age blues

The thing about middle age is that suddenly, you have to watch what you eat because your body is changing, and in the case of many, strange pills and potions start appearing on your bedside cabinet to deal with all manner of ailments.

You look wistfully at your youthful pictures and sigh.

You start thinking about your pension and your legacy and perhaps you start working on your will.

Your mortality starts staring at you in the face. You struggle to keep up with fashion and music trends.

In my case, I simply gave up struggling on modern music, and I am quite happy with the stars of yesteryear.

And of course, you complain about the ‘good old days’, particularly about young people, whether it is about their musical tastes, their dress sense, their language or their attitude.

Perhaps, it is a failure to realise two things.

First, that things have moved on and the world is evolving with different values and attitudes, and secondly, that our parents complained about us back then.

And of course, their parents complained about them.

So it appears it is a generational thing.

When I tell young people they have everything easy these days, from mobile phones to iPads and an array of social networks at their disposal, I am sure they snigger and call me ‘Rock of Ages’ or ‘Methuselah’ behind my back.

I did the same when my parents’ generation complained we did not know what life was and had things easy.

Talking of the full circle of life…

But then, while I can no longer dance with the vitality of a 21 year old or prance about in skinny jeans in nightclubs every weekend without looking ridiculous, I refuse to accept that I am an old man, even if some of my classmates from secondary school are grandfathers.

I still have many miles to go on the clock. At least, on the technology front, I am very much up to date and I move with the trends.

Let’s just say I am young at heart and leave it there.

By Rodney Nkrumah-Boateng,
E-mail: [email protected]