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Unapologetically inappropriate and too old to change now
I recently had someone, a dear friend actually, laugh at an inappropriate remark I’d made and ask if I was ever going to grow up and act my age.
Act my age???
I realise I’m not everybody’s cup of tea. And why would I be? I’m more of a triple-shot espresso with a healthy slug of Baileys.
Yes, my humour can be a little close to the bone. I’m not specifying which bone in particular.
But here’s the thing. I’m not changing.
If I haven’t “grown up” by now, the chances of a sudden transformation are slimmer than me turning down the cheese course. It’s just not happening. The factory settings are well and truly locked in.
And truthfully? I don’t want to grow up. I don’t want to “act my age”. I don’t want to “wither gracefully” like some polite pot plant in the corner of my own life story.
I want to be the inappropriate old lady - if I’m lucky enough to get there. The one with totally mad hair. The one swigging vodka from a hip flask. The one saying exactly what everyone else is thinking but has the good sense not to say.
The one whose family say, “For God’s sake, Kazza,” but who they’d be absolutely devastated if I ever went quiet.
I don’t want to fade into beige in my fifties. I want to laugh too loudly in restaurants and make waiters decades younger than me smile. I want to wear elasticated waistbands but somehow make them chic. I want to drop the F-bomb whenever and wherever I please.
Perhaps not at funerals. Unless, of course, they croaked far too f@cking young.
Ageing, for me, is a privilege. That’s not dramatic, that’s just life. So for however long I’ve got this slightly creaky, occasionally windy, magnificently upholstered body, I’m going to enjoy it.
I’m going to shock my poor mother.
I’m going to choose joy over judgement every single time.
We don’t have to become dull just because the candles cost more than the cake. We don’t have to shrink. We don’t have to apologise for still feeling alive.
We can choose not to be miserable.
We can choose not to disappear.
We can write our own story – preferably with a cracking soundtrack.
As Renton said in one of my favourite books ever, we can “choose life.”
So no. I’m not going to act my age. I’m going to act like myself.
And if that makes me “too much”? Good.
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