Second adolescence

 First published in Column 8 on the 29^th April 1992

Everyone has heard of second childhood. However, this may be preceded by an earlier stage in people’s lives – particularly men’s – which we could class as Second Adolescence.

It’s a time when you play roughhouse with the kids and within minutes are puffing and panting. You’re so exhausted your arm muscles have turned to jelly, and you’re not even strong enough to lift the remote control to turn of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

It’s a time when your weight hasn’t merely gained ground on you, it’s shifted location, and now waddles along in front, giving the impression that in a few months you’ll go into labour.

I’ll never forget the day I first realised my body line had altered. I was in the Moray Place Post Office. In those days its design was Fancy Metallic, with reflections flung from all angles.

While waiting in the queue, I glanced up and saw some character dressed in clothes that looked remarkably like mine. Even the face was familiar. The only difference was that this person had a much more rounded front that mine.

I was not impressed on second glance to realise it was me, and wondered where I could go to get a quick corset job.

These days I avoid checking my reflection in shop windows, or standing sideways in front of the bathroom mirror. Anyway, inside I still see myself as the straight-up-and-down sort of person I used to be.

Second adolescence is a time when you can be charming with the experience of 40 years one minute, and a grizzling, whining, pitiful, blubbering booby the next. As your tears drop on to the dishes in the sink, your wife will ask, which do you prefer, death or divorce?

During second adolescence your friends always seem to have appointments on the other side of town.

Your body and brain are curiously uncoordinated: forgetting the names of people you’ve known for years, missing your mouth when eating, and generally trying to convince yourself that you haven’t really been in residence for nearly half a century.

I never had the pangs of first adolescence. In my teens I led a charmed existence, and all the ‘normal’ rigours of those years passed me by. I’m making up for it now, it seems.

Second adolescence is the time when you ‘Want to Break Free,’ and rebel against all the feelings of being utterly hemmed-in, only to find the mortgage must be paid today, the rates bill has just arrived in the post, the car is making a rumpity noise, three of the children have been told they’re going to camp in a fortnight and the fees have got to be at school today!

You open the chequebook and your conscience says you’ll have to stay in employment or there won’t be anything to cover the overdraft. All your Break Free desires go toddling away leaving you to struggle off to work on your own.

This is the time of life when you no longer possess a single item of clothing that you can call your own (except maybe your underpants). Your kids are all into larger sizes, and anything of yours that isn’t ‘gross’ will do. (If they think it’s gross, anyway, how can you bear to wear it in front of them?

Your only tracksuit trousers wind up in your son’s wardrobe by mistake, and he commandeers them because they ‘only need to be slightly rolled up at the bottom to fit.’

It’s a time when you think that getting up in the morning will probably initiate World War III, so you lie there until everybody’s ready to leave. World War III, however, is only waiting for you to arise.

It’s a time when you feel crumply, stressed out, unwanted, useless, permanently tired, merely an appendage to the family unit. And just when you decided that enough is enough and any bit of rock will do to crawl under, one of the kids comes along and spontaneously says, ‘Dad, you’re magnificent.’

They tell me that Adolescence Part Two doesn’t last forever. Who knows, I might even be done with it by next week.

Courtesy iStock

Timeless

First published in Column 8 on the 8^th April, 1992

It’s a truism that as we get older the years seem to go by faster. Most of us have become used to it. But it’s pretty disturbing when kids who haven’t even reached their teens say that the years are going too fast.

When I was a kid, and no doubt when other people of my generation were kids, there seemed to be all the time in the world.

Time to spend all day doing things. Holidays lasted forever, and parents weren’t desperate for us to get back to school. A week was an eternity, and a year was such that you could barely contemplate it.

These days it’s not only the adults who suffer greatly from lack of time. Why?

The reason I ask, in my rather rhetorical way, is that I’ve felt as though I’ve been chasing my shadow all year. (And I don’t just mean Column 8 deadlines.)

Not only did the holidays shoot past before I could regain my breath, but I was plunged into the New Year in the same fashion as a stone tossed into a pool by a thoughtless boy, and ever since I’ve been trying to stop sinking.

Last year I had free evenings. Now they’re so cluttered I can hardly find to spare. And I don’t mean cluttered with family matters – I’m talking about outside things impinging on them; the evening meal is barely finished before it’s off to this, or quick, someone’s coming round.

Last year weekends seemed long enough to get at least one or two things done. Now they’re a frenzy of activity, driving someone in the family from A to B and someone else from C to D, and not forgetting to pick someone else from E on the way. That’s if all the best laid-out plans don’t slide into some totally chaotic schedule.

Which is why I ask where the time has gone, or rather, who’s snaffled it?

The telephone is one culprit. This creature is superlative for getting messages across quickly, but it’s major power lies in its facility for making last minute arrangements. ‘Yes, we’ll pick up so and so on the way – no, we’ve got plenty of time…’

The car is another time-consuming beast. There’s a paradox. The worst thing about a car, especially in Dunedin, is that you leave leaving till the last minute. Consequently, you try and fit something else into the time saved which means you’re worn out before you go where you’re going.

Television is bugbear number three. I find it a very unrelenting tyrant. It steals so much time you’d use better for something else; then those other things have to be squashed around it. Whole evenings (and cricket-watching days) can be sacrificed to the monster, while the more useful things you’d planned are pushed onto tomorrow, making tomorrow a nightmare.

Most of our labour-saving devices reduce the time taken to do the job, but insist on a payment – the eating up of real relaxation and leisure. Constant Sunday trading is another devourer, making real rest an almost extinct species.

This year I haven’t had time to make a New Year resolution, but now I’m determining to set aside at least half an hour a day just to sit around and do nothing.

Even if I have to get up at five in the morning to do it.

My 1992 self would perhaps be appalled at the lifestyle we now live, where leisure is practically a forgotten thing. You have to make time for it – if you can.

Then there’s the cellphone, streaming TV – and of course, the computer.

Photo courtesy of the Noun Project: aartiraghu

Blood Secret in Spanish...

My wife and I have been learning Spanish through Duolingo for around 600 days and have made some progress, but for the last few days I’ve been trying a different approach to learning the language. 

I haven’t given up on Duolingo – at present I’m using it primarily for the chess component, which is helpful even though I’m very slow to pick up on seeing what best to move. I think in a real game you’d have a lot more idea which pieces were where and how you’d got to the position rather than starting from the position and having to work it all out – which I don’t tend to do anyway. I use their tool of knowing which is the best piece to move, but that still catches me out at times. But I do enjoy the full games, which I often win. I think the bot is a bit odd, perhaps, in some of his moves...

Anyway, on the Spanish side of things I’d got to the point of feeling as though I was just going through the motions because there’s so little variation in terms of the style of lessons: either it’s a combo of reading a sentence, or translating a sentence (usually with the English words given randomly below), or writing a Spanish sentence only from hearing it (but again the Spanish words are randomly laid out to choose from, along with some ones that don’t belong). 

There are occasional vocab exercises, which are usually very easy, and tests where you have slightly less help overall. There are also stories to simultaneously listen to and read, but these don’t require a lot of input on the student’s part. And sometimes there are exercises entirely in spoken Spanish where you have only a modicum of an idea what’s going on. Most of the words go over your head.

However, I was having a snooze the other day and woke up with the idea of using AI (Grok on X) again. I'd used it before when I was trying to write in Spanish around a subject, and it took a huge amount of effort in spite of Grok’s endless encouragement and help. 

This time I had the idea of using one of the books I’d written – in this case The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret - and giving him a few paragraphs at a time to translate into Spanish, and then I’d work on the Spanish from there. I hoped that by gradually moving through the book the more consistent context would help me to grow more familiar with a consistent vocab (for the most part), and the way the Spanish words don’t follow the English format, and getting more familiar with phrases that can’t be straightforwardly translated into English – idioms, in other words, of which English has plenty too. And anything else that was useful.

Of course, Mr Grok (or maybe it’s Miss Grok), is infinitely helpful, going out of his/her way to offer suggestions, being willing to improve the translation where I didn’t feel it was quite cutting the mustard – no da la talla, in other words.

For the first time in a while I feel more enthused about keeping on with learning Spanish. Which is good. It’s not a criticism of Duolingo, which at least in the early stages is very good for getting the language under your belt. But after a while you find it lacks variety, it lacks a personal touch, it’s not good at explaining difficulties, and it doesn’t really teach you to speak the language for yourself.

Here are the opening paragraphs in Spanish: 

William Dylan Mumberson —normalmente conocido como Billy— calculó que había tenido  cuarenta y cinco cortes de pelo en su relativamente corta vida. Todos habían sido tranquilos y sin incidentes. Sin embargo, aquel jueves por la tarde en particular, su corte número cuarenta y seis resultó fuera de lo común.

No era porque el señor Frizzer, el dueño de la barbería, estuviera de vacaciones «tomando el sol ». El cartel en la puerta decía que regresaría en un par de semanas.

Tampoco era porque el sustituto no se hubiera presentado —como habían hecho otros barberos de reemplazo— ni porque no hubiera entablado  ninguna conversación. El hombre era alto y enjuto, y la bata de barbero que llevaba le colgaba floja de su delgada figura. Parecía haber aprendido el oficio en una escuela especializada en cortes de pelo extravagantes. Billy no dejaba de mirarse en el espejo  y se preguntaba qué diría su padre cuando volviera del trabajo. «¿Te has peleado con el cortacésped, Billy?», probablemente preguntaría.

La falta de conversación y el curioso corte de pelo no fueron las cosas que Billy recordaría más de su visita a la barbería aquel día. Lo que hizo memorable la ocasión fue el pequeño corte que recibió en la oreja cuando el barbero lo pinchó con las tijeras, justo al recortar los últimos pelos.