SENIOR MOMENTS by Jimmy Pimentel – Why don’t you act your age? First heard that tune when I was a little kid. And it’s still ringing in my ear on occasion today, in my 80s.
Act your age. Always wondered what this awful line meant to people who threw it around like they knew.
I must have been in grade one when my teacher glared at me for breaking my pencil in two: “Jimmy, act your age!” At the time, I thought: Well, maybe I am no longer in kindergarten so I’d better act like a first-grader. Only pupils in kinder break pencils in two.
At grade six, the principal caught me ruffling my classmate’s hair as we played ‘patintero’ in the school yard: “You there, Jimmy! Act your age, will you!” So that’s it, I thought, six graders don’t mess classmates’ hair.
In high school, ‘Act your age!’ came around a bit often. I began to suspect that I was either a slow learner or a bit of a retard. Even my mother was raining on my ego when I’d re-tell adult jokes with stupid punch lines. “Now stop that, Jimmy! Act your age!”
Oh, what the heck, the jokes were beyond my honest comprehension, anyway.
Then college days took me to a new level: Girls. I learned on early that girls liked men who would make them laugh. By then I had collected enough jokes to fill a library, so I used them as bait. Problem was that I was poor at telling jokes. I’d start laughing before the punch line.
Girls would smile in anticipation as I worked up toward my punch line. I’d think: “Oh yes, she’s gonna like this. I think I got her hooked.”
But I could never wait long enough to throw the punch line. And I’d burst laughing, discarding any chance of winning the girl’s heart before my punch line. She can’t wait. Turns sour and pats me on the head: “Act your age, Jimmy. Got to go, my boyfriend’s waiting.”
But of course. Laughing out loud at my own jokes is kindy stuff.
I quit laughing out loud since. But in my old age the grandchildren would look at me in blue jeans and red Adidas T-shirt and wince: “Gee, bololo (that’s my fond name with the grandkids), act your age!”
At private family parties, I dance the hip-hop and my grownup offspring mutter embarrassingly under their breath: “Act your age, pop!”
Out in the street when I give a young girl the eye and wink, my reward is a blushing smile with that dismissive remark: “Act your age, pretty boy!”
So whadayamean by “Act your age”, bro? What exactly does it mean?
You. Yes, you! You’re reading this, aren’t you?
Act your age!