Of old-fashioned people in a fast-changing world
What you need to know:
- In every picture that I see on social media nowadays, there is almost always someone posing with a foot slightly off the ground.
I’m a late bloomer, and sometimes it works against me. The other day I was having a conversation with a young woman in her 20s, who I recently engaged to tutor my children, (teaching was on the verge of killing me) when I asked, “Ulipata ile dough?” only for her to look at me as if I’d just landed from Mars. To her credit, she was polite enough not to laugh at my outdated language.
It turns out dough, (or is it doh?) which refers to money in sheng for the sake of those who are more outdated than I am, was overtaken by events about 20 years ago, in fact, other terms have come and gone. To be on the safe side, I decided that from then on, I would only call money, and other things by their given names.
Tongue sticking out
I have also never quite boarded the series bandwagon. For instance, by the time I discovered Scandal and Blacklist, the whole world had moved onto other more exciting shows, and if you must know, I only recently discovered Big Little Lies.
In every picture that I see on social media nowadays, there is almost always someone posing with a foot slightly off the ground. It’s a posing trend that has been sweeping across the world for some time now, but being someone who does not particularly like to pose for photos since I am the impatient kind, I am yet to take such a picture.
Not only this, it is only the other day that my eight-year-old daughter convinced me to take a selfie with my lips puckered and another with my tongue sticking out.
As for flashing the peace sign when taking photos, something the world has been doing for a 100 years now, I did it recently for the first time when my 13-year-old niece was taking a picture of me only for her to exclaim, “Aunt Caro!” sounding embarrassed on my behalf. And can you imagine I have never used the word ‘dope’ in a conversation?
Entertainment joints
It’s the same thing with entertainment joints – for some reason, I’m always the last one to visit the latest one in town, the one that is currently “happening” if that term is even used anymore, though I have a feeling it was long buried and forgotten.
I finally turn up when the buzz has long fizzled out, when the famously restless Nairobians have already decamped to a newer, shinier and more exciting discovery.
Don’t get me wrong though, my turning up late does not mean that I am not aware of the trends, I am, but I have never been under pressure to sample them just because others are partaking of them, therefore, as you can imagine, I’ve never been influenced by fashion trends, or, thankfully, never felt the need to abide by them.
Therefore over the years, I have been saved the embarrassment of turning up in an outfit that displays my bits or is totally wrong for my body shape and size in the name of fashion.
I tell myself that being old-fashioned is not so bad because to some extent, it insulates you from peer pressure and the herd mentality, from doing things you know you shouldn’t do but doing them anyway to fit
