THE THING ABOUT TWENTY-YEAR-OLDS.

I squint into the screen, YAWN, feel my stiff neck then close my big mouth. I chew nothing, if you know what I mean. I have been seated in the same spot for the last five hours; it comes with a shifting manner into different positions for a change. How about we talk of age mates?

You might walk by without notice but you won’t if he flashes the smile. He has the irritating-joker’s-intellectual face. He is 22, Ezekiel. I like opinionated individuals, he is one. He once said, “Being a twenty-year-old is a phase of self-discovery. We find ourselves only to lose ourselves to another. ” Last time I checked, I was lost myself.

Ezekiel keeps a tidy place; the kind that a lady can appreciate while it is still comfortable for a guy. There are fellows that keep an extremely neat place till it gets spooky. One that you silently ask, “Are you the one who cleans?” Many a times I have been in his company and we often sound like a debating club. If not that, a movie or music plays as I wander off in thought.

Severally, I have asked myself; when is the right time to pull the I-love-you card? For two decades of life, love seems real. Some play I-am-no-longer-a-teen while others deal with love-doesn’t-exist. With that dimpled blank face plus the hoaxing eyes, my friend dropped this one, “Most people of our age do not know what love is. They are simply in love with the idea of falling in love.”

“Have you felt love yourself?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Is she your woman now?”

“No. I haven’t found someone worth falling for here.”

Unlike the Richter scale; what scale is used to measure worth, surely, at this age? Do achievements to your name really count? I mean the academic ones? What about keeping a steady relationship? An older financially stable guy will do for most girls just as a faithful age mate settles a guy. Or is it principality and has to do with character to be judged by? Might it be having the kind of money to impress an adult on a pay-roll? Well those definitely won’t be answered today.

In my quest to answer the vital question; I am past twenty now, what next? I found myself sounding like a 39-year-old bachelor to my age mates. I sounded like an over-ambitious kid to a 46-year-old mother. I believed it is not yet time to take liquor alone at my place till I began writing. I only found clubbing irritating a girl walked into my face and kissed me. The problem was the brandy in her breath, a stranger for that matter. I am even afraid I possibly began dressing like a responsible married man.

Someone finds that boring, they have the right to do so.

My friend has an untouchable sense of balance. He has one too many accounts of spiritual adventure. You know the scary-prayer-warrior stuff though I have met several ladies who were quite taken by his charm. The devil’s nectar doesn’t feature among the fluids that go down his throat though. He never lacks an answer to anything, only, how girls do not know what they want, beats Guru Ezekiel hands down.  

I believe there is no proper way to carry out your age. It would really help if a random fellow came up with the formulae of being twenty. I strictly advise the non-involvement of parents in this competition because it often ends up with Wepukhulu wishing he had had a better childhood.

I would be wrong to hold a do-what-you-want rally. All I know is, in defining such persons the following things matter; FRIENDS, FUN, INDEPENDENCE, RESPONSIBILITY, CHANGE and GOD. Whatever you consider God to be. I guess I won’t be wrong to ask you to identify yourself. Not what I expect you to be.

My watch has a suggestive V, it reads 4.00 AM.  What were you thinking?

Sad Poet.