BACHELOR'S DIARY: Is age really just a number?

I’ve never really thought about it much whenever people said age is nothing but a number. Usually, it’s people who accomplish something their agemates would only dream about.

Like Ruth Flowers, who became a club DJ in her late 60s, performed during the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and released three singles.

Or Yuichiro Miura, who became the oldest person to climb Mount Everest at age 80 in 2013. That, I don’t even dream of ever achieving. Forget Mount Everest. I have no desire to crest Mount Kenya, which is only a stone’s throw away.

Closer to home, I was on a date the other day with a 21-year-old intern at the hospital. While she asked me out, saying she wanted to pick a doctor’s mind, I can’t say I wasn’t having fun going out with someone more than a decade my junior. Someone whose skin and other assets still defy gravity.

The dinner began as expected and followed the dater playbook to the letter. You know, meaning the light banter was entertaining and she smiled or laughed or layed shy at all the appropriate places. Being a seasoned driver, the bus was right on course. Did she pick my brain, though? I feel you asking.

There wasn’t enough time to tell. Halfway through our meal, the largest meanest-looking woman burst into the restaurant and made a beeline for our table.

“Alice Wanjiku,” she called in a tone matching her physique, “is this the young man you told me you were going out with?”

I didn’t care for the way she put air quotes around the word “young”.

“Mother,” cried Alice, “couldn’t this have waited until I got back home?”

“And by home, what do you mean? Our home or the home of this degenerate old geezer who is all too willing to rob the cradle?”

“But mother, he’s only 30 years old.”

Wanjiku’s mother planted her arms akimbo. “Is that what he lied to you? Look at him. If he’s not approaching 40, then I’m the new queen of Bugandaland.”

“Excuse me, miss,” I began in an attempt to make peace.

She cut me off with a scathing look. “Did I talk to you, old man? Let’s even make the wild assumption that you indeed are 30 years old. That would make you nine years older than my daughter. Nine whole years.”

Alice came to my defence. “That’s not a whole lot.”

Her mother swung towards her. “Oh, it’s not? I’ll have you know, lassie, that I had six children in nine years. Six healthy pregnancies I carried to term, and one of them is you, you ungrateful ingrate. And what’s worse, I went into the longest labour with you.”

She pivoted to me. “You may count yourself lucky that you’ll never have to experience 16 hours feeling like a Toyota Vitz is being pushed out through your mouth. You see that big head of hers? Yes, the one with the matching big mouth? Try pushing that through your nose, then you can come and justify dating my little girl.”

But age is nothing but a number.

The statement played in my head like a broken record as the woman marched her daughter out of the restaurant to my utter embarrassment and the complete amusement of the other diners.

“She’s legal,” I found myself saying out loud if only to save a little of whatever dignity I’d come in with. “She’s 21.”

Even after Alice snuck out that night and knocked at my door at two in the morning, I couldn’t get her mother’s voice out of my head.

“Try pushing a Vitz through your nose!”