(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) I take great delight attending the weddings of young couples but I was both shocked and disgusted when I was asked for the pleasure of my company to witness the marriage of a 60-year old man tying a knot with a 19-year old girl.
As a way of protesting, I declined to attend though I did not have the courage of saying it on the face of the old groom-to-be who has more grey hair on his head than sense. That was last weekend. This weekend, the man is celebrating his first week as a proud husband of a woman who will still be bouncing on the springs of her youth just a decade from now while he will be hobbling alongside her with a stick.
The man might well be reading this column and I am sure he will not be happy about it. However, it is not just me who finds it disgusting. On the other side of the coin, he has many supporters as well who may argue that has not broken any law. I wonder how his first wife might be feeling about it. To familiar myself with her feelings, I tested my wife when I joked that I was thinking of taking a very young wife. She elbowed me on the ribs and I still carry that nasty bruise a week later. To confirm that my joke was in bad taste, she hissed under her breath, "dirty old man."
A year ago, I made a deliberate mistake of asking an elderly man if his daughter had flu when I knew all the time it was his wife. He glared at me and hurried away, furiously tugging his 'baby' wife along with him. Perhaps I should stop waging a war against dirty old men who still think they have the 'steam' left in their rusty funnels and concentrate on useful endeavors. I am making myself unpopular for something I might resort to perhaps 10 years from now.
On closer scrutiny, men looking for girls young enough to be their daughters prey on poor families. Another man, perhaps in the same age bracket, would have a string of daughters and would be glad to get rid some of them. Usually, years ago, that man would have committed the same mistake of getting hitched with a younger model, and he has now produced a big flock he cannot feed. This September, you would see six-year olds dragging old men to the registrar's officer for their first enrollment to school. For us who know better, we know the white bearded old gentlemen hobbling in the school corridors, are not their grandfathers.
Such men are so lethal that the old wife would always have to watch them when the neighbours' daughters are around. She would also have to vehemently deny her own daughters' requests to bring their friends in the house. I think they hate growing old. They convince themselves that they still have a few things to prove while they edge closer to the grave.
However, we know the majority of men rather grow old gracefully than make themselves clowns in the circus of matrimony. A few weeks ago, I met a newly retired banker walking with a young woman who quickly introduced her to me as his daughter in case I got the wrong idea. I looked a few paces behind them and noticed his old wife walking towards us. They were there to do some shopping for the forthcoming wedding of their daughter.
There was a man, I told my wife later, who was still in the service of his only family, refusing to be distracted by the glitters outside the four walls of his house. She nodded her head and said, "he is what I call a clean old man".
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