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Nose piercing

Nose piercing (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As my 39 birthday rapidly approaches. Obviously, one begins to reflect on life and the future. Most of us are in denial about our age and we (well, I) tend to still behave like a teenager. I never feel like I have ‘grown up’ or that I am an adult and often I find myself still doing the things that perhaps I never got to do as a teenager; due to excessively strict parenting; fear of parents and just a general desire not to get into trouble.

I did try and rebel against my parents, once when I was in the UK and far away from Africa, and the closest I got to being a rebel was a nose piercing. Besides never managing to work out how to blow one’s nose without the nose ring flying out and hitting someone in the eye, I felt it prudent to remove it before seeing my parents, so it lasted about two months.

And so it seems my desire to rebel and be reckless is happening now…or I have been going through the teenage rebellion phase since the end of my marriage. However, when I speak to my much older friends, they too seem not to have ‘grown up’. It is not that we behave badly but we do choose to have fun. I have friends who go clubbing or to gigs most weekends. Waking up feeling a tad rough on a Sunday is not uncommon. Are these friends without kids? Not all, some do have kids and they do go out on the weekend and have a wicked time. They just accept that being woken up on a Sunday morning by their kids will mean they will be sending their kids away to make their own cereal and watch the T.V. They will feel guilty about the quality time but it is about a balance and we do need our space and out time to be have fun with people our own age or like-minded individuals.

I am lucky, I have proper teenagers and sleeping till 11 is ritualistic for them as they require more sleep, so I am passed the early mornings. Anyway, I was prepared to have milk all over the kitchen flor for a couple of extra hours on a Sunday. My kids are great and I don’t think they suffered terribly for the so called taboo of using the T.V. as the babysitter. I would be willing to bet that every parent is guilty of it.

But that is an aside from the real issue of aging another year. Is one too old to do certain things? Am I, as my kids have decided, going through a mid-life crisis similar to the male mid-life crisis, where they get a motorbike and trawl the streets for a much younger (at least 10 years) version of their spouse in order to prove their virility? Is that what having at tatoo at the age of 39 is suggesting?

Both my kids have provided me with a resounding, “No!” in relation to the idea of body art.

However, tatoos are celebrations of people and they symbolise ideas and values for people. They can’t be wrong as they are individual choices. Surely, body art is just another way of expressing one’s self, one’s belief systems and one’s attitudes towards life?

To tatoo or not, I guess will be a spontaneous action and whilst I will listen to others, I generally do I what I want…

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