Days of Lambada are over. Vegetable listening for seniors.

‘Klap eens in de handjes’. Granddad and grandson

With youth comes wild abandonment and Brazilian coffee if not Brazilian waxes as well. We would give ourselves over to impulsive behaviour and do the Lambada. The impulse to follow dreams and a keen focus on bikini surfie girls/ polo necked gods of the surf and sun have been tempered. Wildfires of our youths now becalmed and doused down by an air-crane helicopter named Elvis hovering almost permanently over us, just in case of a senior flare up in the lonely petuniated suburbs of no return. We knew a different Elvis then. We used to sway hips like the best of them. Now we risk someone calling triple zero and an ambulance. What has happened?

The agility both of body and mind are less elastic. Not necessarily less able. Just containing or obtaining less flourishes or circularity of movements. The tendons have stiffened and all seem now in 78 LP feeble crank-up phonograph mode. We have pre-coital naps instead of post, if not during as well. The Sugar Hill Hip Hop rapper speed has long gone into reverse. I doubt I could do even a single number on the masonite sheet my son used to carry around when trying to earn a crust rapping around the corner in East Balmain or Kings Cross. At best I might sit on the concrete pavements supported by a few cushions and bang on an empty paint drum in order to attract alms or a few bitter biscuits.

Lately at Aldi’s I have taken to a rather amusing if not perverse little past-time or diversion ,just to while some time away. You could call it ‘senior moments’. I have taken to picking up a crop of garlic or an eggplant, similar vegetables or even fruit. ( Mangoes lent themselves exceptionally well for that.) I make sure someone is near and watching. I then nonchalantly tap the item while holding it to my ear, as if getting an answer or sound back indicating a level of quality of the item, a kind of sonar echo from within the depth of the vegetable. I sometimes put the item back, pick another one and repeat the tapping. I then nod approvingly this time and put it in my trolley, pretending I am a picky shopper. I then continue along the isles but look back unobserved. I have seen now shoppers imitating my tapping and listening to the vegetables/ fruit.

I know it is rather dodgy and of dubious moral value. I do trick people like that but some compensation for lacking youthful agility and tempestuousness of earlier years is surely permissible. I could be holding up a bank or molesting a salvation army officer knocking on my door. Some very strange things are happening at times. It makes my fruit and vegie sonar listening a rather innocent past-time. Some might go further and hold me as stupid, a screw loose and infantile. They could be right on the money.

There is hope.