How To Age Gracelessly

Birthdays are funny things. On the 31st of January I was two years old, then the 1st of February comes around and all of a sudden I'm fifty percent older. My staff tell me I'm now three. How does that happen? How can my age increase by fifty percent over night? My male staff also had his birthday on the 1st of February. Why didn't his age increase by fifty percent too? No wonder guinea pigs don't live as long as humans. My male staff shares my birthday and yet his age increased by less than two percent. I think it's a conspiracy to prevent cavies - clearly a higher intelligence - from taking over the planet. If my male staff's age increased by the same percentage as mine he'd be well over seventy, which means that his age would have overtaken his IQ.

In my experience humans have an odd relationship with age. The young ones, say between the age of four and eleven tend to exaggerate their age. Ask a six year old how old they are and they'll tell you that they are nearly seven. They want to be older than they are. Then from about twelve years to thirty five you have a reasonable chance of getting the truth when you ask a human their age. Then it gets complicated. At some point between the age of thirty five and forty five human females have some sort of unfortunate brain explosion which makes them forget their age and habitually knock at least five years off when asked how old they are.  At about this same age male humans have a different sort of brain explosion which suddenly makes them think that it is acceptable to go out and collect the newspaper from the lawn in their underpants and that younger women now find them attractive when they don't shave and wear grubby tee-shirts and shorts so tight that dogs follow them around, convinced that they are concealing sausages and meatballs on their person.

My male staff prepares to go and fetch the newspaper from the lawn.

In the male of the species this phase peters out eventually and is replaced by a much worse stage. Between the ages of forty five and fifty they start sucking in their stomachs and dressing in clothes that they think are trendy, but which in fact went out of fashion about twenty years earlier. My male staff for example has kept his flared trousers and wing collared shirts from the nineteen seventies, convinced that at any moment he will start to look good in them. Good grief, the silly old goat didn't even look good in them in 1978. But of course age and alcohol consumption has withered his brain cells in the same way that Autumn withers the leaves a tree, and his brain cells are now laying in a crumpled pile at his feet, hiding his platform shoes - thankfully.

Wealthier male humans might go out and buy a Ferrari or a Lamborghini in the mistaken belief that being seen in a brightly coloured chunk of fast Italian metal will make them seem viral and attractive to chicky babes, whereas in fact they might as well wear a neon sign around their neck that says "This Silly Old Fart Is Past It, And Has A Very Small, Shrivelled Willy And A Bladder Problem Caused By Having A Prostate The Size Of A Coconut."

Females of this age lose interest in sex or physical contact of any sort, considering it insanitary, but they do gain a peculiar interest in television programmes like Downton Abbey and Upstairs Downstairs in which the characters often have the morals of a small furry rodent. They'll tut like Skippy The Bush Kangaroo at the goings on, and whisper to their friends about the terrible behaviour, but they can't wait to watch the next episode.

At around about the age of sixty five males revert to wearing just their underpants to fetch the paper from the lawn again, and this continues until their family get sick of them and they are shuffled off into an aged care home. Females of about seventy years of age revert to their pre-teens in that they start to exaggerate their age again.
 "I'm eighty-nine next March." 
 "So you're eighty-eight then." Is the wrong response to this and will earn you a stare so hostile that anyone witnessing it might assume that you have tweaked the old dear's nipple. Octogenarian female humans will also use their age as a weapon. For example, you beat an an old dear to the supermarket queue by a short head only to be told "I'm eighty-four you know." At this point you should give up your place in the queue to her. If you don't you will almost certainly received the nipple tweaking stare and the disapproval of all the other people in the queue.

Anyway, at least my age will only increase by thirty-three percent next February.

BADGER'S FOOTNOTE
I'm still only two, but I'm told that my feet don't look a day over eighteen months.