Another Year Older, Another Year More Horrifying

With age comes wisdom and acceptance of the inevitabilities of life. I therefore knew my endeavour was unlikely to succeed, but made a brave attempt anyway. Unfortunately my plan to draw the poison of vitriolic thoughts and words before they spilled out to an annoying colleague was not altogether successful. Though I filled sympathetic ears and wasted valuable internet space with what I hoped would be cathartic rantings, alas, I fear I may have injured the Delicate Flower’s feelings with an incautious (but justified) outburst in response to her disquieting behaviour. Ah well, just as other workmates have before me, I’ll make my forced apology and continue to work unaided while she takes more stress leave. Why meddle with the status quo?

Happily I’m not as highly-strung as some, or I’d be on stress leave too. Unlike certain others, I can usually take jests and remarks in the spirit they are offered, rather than stewing for several sleepless nights about the hidden meanings of punctuation in an email. Were it not for this trait shared by all normal, rational human beings, I would surely be a quivering wreck, and consequently unable to complete my riveting report on the latest synthetic sausage casings.

You see, now that I’ve celebrated another anniversary of my birth, I’m on the ‘wrong’ side of 30 (as my obstetrician so tactfully implied), and due to recent staff turnover I’m in the ‘old’ half of the team. I’m not rushing out for botox and collagen just yet, but I have been wistfully admiring the youthful skin of our new graduate and wondering if I appeared that impossibly young when I started at the department.

The other day, I was laughing with one of the boys (five years younger than I, but it may as well be ten. Egad! He’s never heard of Monkey Magic or The Goodies!) over an amusing anecdote he was telling about being set up with an eager girl.

“So why didn’t you like her?” I asked. “She was pretty, wasn’t she? And she has a good job?”

He stared incredulously at me. “I couldn’t go out with her!” he said, horrified. “She was as old as you!”

I briefly considered what the Delicate Flower would do were she confronted with such a remark, but immediately pooh-poohed her natural course of action. Why bother with the red-tape of stress leave when old-age retirement is just around the corner?