Where Being 26 Years Too Old is a Bit of a Pain

There’s something I’ve noticed. People who are eighteen go out dancing. A lot. They roll in at 3.45 having danced their little cotton socks off. I have this on very good authority from the person with the worn foot-coverings that was consuming a bowl of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes in the kitchen last night at 3.46. Well, I too was afforded the thrills of late night/early morning cereal, but the late night dancing, carousing and general partying was denied to me. Why? Because I am too old. Or perhaps not precisely that. Because my friends are too old. Or boring, or sensible, or just generally not available due to childcare duties, forthcoming elections and Very Important Programs they must watch on the TV.

‘Let’s go dancing!’ I enthusiastically suggest at the dinner table. This is greeted with a variety of looks ranging from the ‘my mother is mad’ to ‘I’m nearly fifty and I must spend the evening in the bath’ to ‘cats don’t go dancing’. One more helpful soul, rather than saying ‘Mum, I’m going clubbing later if you would care to accompany me,’ does attempt some sort of solution.

‘What you need are some new friends.’ True. I thought. Physicists can be very perspicacious people at times. Not at other times, when things like not walking into doorposts, or pouring juice without spilling it, or knowing how to clean up mess created by cornflour are involved.

Now don’t imagine that I don’t love my friends. I do. Dearly. But they all seem to be in the pre-party family stage of life or the post-party grumpy old man stage of life. I am the odd one out, the weirdo, the strange forty-something year old who wants to be a teenager. Sad really. I can discover no solution. Aside from perhaps a helpful prescription from the doctors to calm my teenage libido. But actually that is another problem, probably inherent in the original problem, probably solvable with the same drugs.

So, I am not going out. Instead I have just agreed to spend the evening making a sixties-style necklace for a sixties party tomorrow night which I am also not going to. Even though in both senses I am closer to the sixties. Monday morning first thing I will visit the doctor and ask her if she would like to either prescribe me a suitable dose of tranquilisers or go partying with me.