The white middle-aged, middle-class man

Tomorrow I turn 35.

Officially, I become a white middle-aged, middle-class man.

And doesn’t it suck balls?

There was a time in history when that statement wouldn’t have struck fear in my heart. It would have been a coming of age. The reaching of a pinnacle of human development. In the 1950s we were the ones who drove the great machines of society. We were the bastions of order. The keepers of civilisation. Someone to be looked up to. A position to be aspired to. We were the American Dream. The great white hope. We were the men of Madison Avenue, Wall Street, Fleet Street, Bishopsgate and the JSE. We were legends in our own minds. Everyone, apparently, wanted to be us. Even Bill Cosby.

But then the bubble burst.

Turned out we were the cause of all the world’s problems. We were the chauvinists, the conservatives, the racists, the squares, the short-sighted SOBs. The ones who sold the world for a ride in a fancy car. Where we thought we had been the guardians of civility, turned out we were just the overseers, the prison guards, the pen pushers and the instruments of tyranny.

And when we thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did. Not content to just see us as the bad guy, the world is now starting to ignore us. No longer are we the bane of Africa. Or the curse of the South East Asia. Just look at those two fine specimens of our breed — Mr Simon Mann & his cohort the 2nd Baronet Thatcher. One is rotting away in Black Beach prison and the other is lucky his mum is who she is. They couldn’t have organised a piss-up in a brewery, never mind a coup d’état. While in Afghanistan, some tribesmen are running rings around the British and American armies.

Our fiscal wisdom is no longer in demand. Look at what we did to the banks in NY and London. It was so bad, Iceland turned up for sale on eBay. The Chinese and the Indians have begun the massive climb to the top. They are the new money pots. The ones everyone is going to turn to for sage-like advice. While in South Africa, the almighty marketing juggernaut has given up chasing white rabbits and swung its guns in a new direction. They are on the hunt for black diamonds.

Our irrelevance has been sealed. We have become the butt of the joke. The douche bag teacher on South Park. Leonardo in Revolutionary Road. The dad in Family Guy. The professor in Disgrace. The authors of self-hating blogs!

I can hear a lone voice out there crying in rebuttal: “But we landed on the moon!” Sorry buddy. Haven’t you heard? They lost the tapes.

Sorry Y’all. It’s raining out. And tomorrow I’m 35.