Living in the past

The neatly sewn monogram on her yellow Polo Shirt announced to me, and any one else who cared to look, that she was Kylie, Assistant Manager at the local swimming complex. It was my first visit.

'Senior please Kylie', I said, - almost proud of the fact I'd reached that magic age where every thing's half price again. 'Oh yes', she questioned? 'My dad looks way older than you, and he's only 56! 'Mind you', she added, he is 50 kg over weight, a couch potato, and wouldn't come to the pool if his life depended on it.' 'Well, perhaps it might,' I replied with a smile as I ratted through the change in my jeans pocket for the $3.50 cost of a senior entrance. We're now the chattiest of friends, but her comments made me wonder, what constitutes old, and how come it doesn't always equate to age?

When I was first married I was 22 (yes, really) I was very much the trendy young man about town: 'Avengers' style 3 piece hand tailored suites, winkle picker shoes, a tailored 'car-coat' and always a colored silk handkerchief in my jacket pocket. My musical tastes were current. I went to all the right parties and to use the urban jargon of the day, I was very much 'in the grove!'

Ten years and 5 children later I found it impossible to button the suit jacket, I'd long since discarded the waist coat, the silk handkerchief had been mangled in the wash and the winkle pickers were past their best. We occasionally still got together for a 60's revival evening and a chat about how great it was back then, but the 2am feed for the little one meant the evenings finished early and the 'grove' I so proudly once occupied was now beginning to look more like a grave.

Like so many of our generation, we had built a demographic wall around our fading youth, shut ourselves off from outside stimulation and were struggling to rise our children in post war cultural vaccum which wasn't appropriate for the 80's and which only increased the hight of the wall. I knew very well where Kiley's dad was: lost for ever in the timeless 60's with no hope of ever being found.

Yes, they were 'good old days,' they always will be, but they're past. You can't live there and the only difference between a grove and a grave is the depth.