Older so younger

“The photograph is younger,” says one of the characters in Tom Stoppard’s Professional Foul, to which another replies “it must be an old photograph… How odd… Young therefore old. Old therefore young. Only odd at first glance. The second glance is called linguistic analysis.”

One of the things we discovered while we were clearing out our former flat in Kehl, in Germany, was the huge collection of photographs we’d never weeded, let alone sorted or mounted anywhere. A lot of them are old. And therefore young. Which is odd if you’re not into linguistic analysis.

One of them in particular brought me up short. 

Was I ever so young? Were they?
Ah, the joys of an old photograph

My first thought was to wonder whether I was ever so young.  Which is another odd thought, isn’t it? After all, I remember having been a kid. But, hey, this all about that kind of oddness.

At the time I didn’t think of myself as that young. Those two lads, real bundles of fun except when they were real bundles of exasperation, also marked a rite of passage for me. With the arrival of the first of them, it was finally borne in on me, conclusively and undeniably, that I was no longer part of the younger generation. I’d had a stepson for a couple of years by then, but here were two members of a generation younger than mine to whose existence I’d actually contributed (or so my wife assured me, at least).

It was not before time, I have to admit. I was thirty when my first son was born and should already have reconciled myself to being inexorably moving towards middle age. But it took the actual arrival of my kids to bring the truth home to me.

Being reminded of all that by the photo came as a surprise, but by no means an unpleasant one.

But what was most striking about was the arithmetic I soon enough started doing.

That young man who didn’t think of himself as young, has long since stopped being young at all. Long, long since. I’ve lived more than as long again as I’d lived at the time the photo was taken.

As for the two lads – why, they’re 35 and 33 today. Which makes them just older than I was in that photograph.

All very odd. And nothing to do with linguistic analysis. Just with the passage of time and the formation of old, old memories.

Pleasantly brought back by the discovery of an old photograph.