Is he acting strange? Blame it on midlife crisis

We may console ourselves that age is just a number until our knees start to lose elasticity and we struggle to manoeuvre our way up and down the stairs. The flat tummy we took for granted is gradually replaced by an annoyingly stubborn bulge.

While the only reason we had not been exercising was procrastination, suddenly we realise that it will now take effort to even jog around the estate. They told us life begins at 40 but it is also in our 40s that those silver hairs start sneaking into our once jet black hair. The lifestyle diseases that our bodies were somehow able to combat start creeping in with doctors warning us to watch our sugar and alcohol intake- our journey towards frailty quickens with every successive year.

Waning agility in the bedroom

We are jolted to reality that we are indeed aging – we are at the peak of the bell curve and even though the climb has been long and gradual, the way down is going to be faster than we are mentally ready for. Baba watoto who until recently had been proud to show his agility in the bedroom suddenly can’t achieve the same laps let alone the initial turgidity from whence all marriages are anchored.  He realises with some nostalgia that the fresh faced colleagues the company is hiring no longer ogle at him unless he takes home a fatter pay check.

He is not anything to write home about and gradually age and weight have relegated him to the bottom of the line. To his dismay, the younger co-workers are already calling him mubaba and surreptitiously discussing his wardrobe malfunction. Back home, he realises that mama watoto who has eventually shed the baby fat is suddenly looking beautiful and distant.

She no longer complains about his failing turgidity but instead spends more hours in front of the mirror and takes more selfies than her teenage daughter. It dawns on mubaba that he has to make an effort to remain relevant. And so he joins the gym and changes his wardrobe, he starts wearing skinny jeans and DMing beautiful girls on social media with the hope that one of them ataingia box. He is desperate to be wanted again even if it is by a stranger.

He desires to be young again and what better way to prove it than to get himself a younger girlfriend who will cradle his developing potbelly and tell him he is the best thing to happen since Netflix. Mubaba will feel rejuvenated and may even start reposting his pictures of social media with the confidence that only an infatuated man can muster. He will live in this bubble for as long as he will not realise that his younger girlfriend has a younger boyfriend who though may be broke, does not have any problems with turgidity.

Sanity will be restored when mubaba realises his young girlfriend has been cheating on him. While he thought the concoctions he was taking would enable him to bridge the gap he had lost with age, he learns that he will never be enough. He finds his way back home tired and disillusioned only to find mama watoto back to the kitchen with a headscarf and a leso around her waist.

Ben Ten chronicles

She is singing gospel songs and acting her age once again. She is preparing the traditional vegetables and not the horrible lasagne that she had been forcing down everybody’s throats recently. Unknown to him, mama watoto has suffered the same predicament and has probably had to part with a lot of money to avoid her nudes being leaked.

The Ben Ten she has been seeing had deviously taken some compromising pictures of her and was threatening to splash them on social media. It is now that you both accept the reality and embrace each other. You are finally in agreement that the best years of your sex life may be dwindling but with a few adjustments you can still make the best of it before the well completely dries and its walls collapse. With the football and the footballer both worn out, fair matches can still be played.

It is in our 40s that we realise we are not invincible and with this knowledge, we try to do the much we can before time entirely runs out. As gravity gradually pulls down parts of us that we have worked so hard to hold together over the years, we shift our focus to more tangible things. It could be going back to school, starting a business or even building a dream house.

We hope our children will be able to achieve what we weren’t able to accomplish. We call it middle life crisis.