The sexagenarian on WhatsApp

I saw this really old chap type a message on his phone. Very crass of me, I know, because I wasn’t supposed to be peeping over his shoulder.

But I was in a bar waiting for people who insist on making an entrance and he was seated right in front of me. And I was bored. The bar didn’t have any TV. Or painting. So it wasn’t my fault. 

He was a really old chap, pushing 69, drinking a cold Peroni beer from a long tumbler.

I wouldn’t have bothered peering over his shoulder had I not seen that he was on WhatsApp! I mean, come on! WhatsApp? At nearly 70? Was he on Instagram too? I wondered. Did he retweet things he liked? Or double tap? Did he take and share pictures of his mushroom soup with his mates back at the country club? If he was on Instagram there must be some chicks he followed and whose pictures he ‘liked’ once in a while. Naughty old man, you!

I was fascinated by this old chap who had one foot firmly in 1975 and another in the digital age. He was about my dad’s age and talking of which, I have never met anyone least bothered by technology than my dad.

He has an android phone all right, but I suspect he only uses it for calls and SMS.

I Googled him

The other day I Googled him and Google asked me if I was sure he was the one I was searching?

I then searched for his images and what came up was a bunch of white men, Nkaissery (I swear) and some chap who looks like Heisenberg from Breaking Bad, only with a bushy moustache.

I was shocked. My dad has no online footprints. The Internet, with all its tentacles, and memory doesn’t know he exists. I don’t know whether to be happy or sad for him.

Anyway, back to this old man at the bar. He sat there, messaging. I couldn’t quite make out the words or the group picture from my seat, but it was a group all right. Maybe he’s one of those rich wheat farmers and he and his farmer pals were discussing fertiliser and modern farming methods. I don’t know but I was very proud of him.

But he typed ever so slowly. He used this unsure index finger which he would lift and let hover over his keypad as if searching for a letter.

This finger would remain suspended for so long I would go to the washroom and back and still find him that way. I got an urge to ask him, “Hello? Is it letter “B” you are looking for?”

By the way, I hope by this time you can tell that today’s column is going to be aimless banter, but please don’t abandon me in this dark hour of creative desperation.

Anyway,  I imagined that if his group members were anything like him, one conversation would last up to Easter.

But he was with it. I almost asked him what he felt about WhatsApp groups. I think everybody is in at least three such groups, voluntarily or involuntarily. Those groups are some form of modern bullying. You get added without your consent and one morning you wake up to 521 unread messages.

The worst thing is leaving a WhatsApp group;  “Biko left the group” says the notification, and everybody will see it even if they pretend they haven’t, and are either saying, “No he didn’t!” or “God bless his courage!”

My brother left a family WhatsApp group last year. While we were recovering from that, his wife followed him out. We were so shocked we didn’t say anything for days.

Finally, after the shock wore off I asked: Seriously? Are these people serious?

That message is a permanent reminder that you are a kill-joy. Nobody ever left a group and looked good. It looks like you feel too good for them, even if you genuinely don’t belong . It looks like you slammed the door on your way out. You look snobbish and anti-social and boorish. Then when you leave you never know if people are calling you names back there.

Recently I was moaning to a friend about how WhatsApp groups can be intrusive and she said, “Why don’t you mute it?” And I asked, “Mute it? Is that an option?”

And she said yes, and then I realised that it isn’t the sign of the end of the world anymore.