Twenty Something

It's not very often that one turns twenty. Once in a lifetime, another landmark on the perpetual M-way ride we all make. Greater than nineteen but not quite twenty-one. So here I find myself in the knell of adolescence - the final curtain on the teenage years is about to fall, as tomorrow I reach this hallowed age. Mourning for lost youth, or confidently striding into my adult life aside, I still haven't solved the riddle. The conundrum my father had set me a few days ago, when solved, and only then do I get my birthday present - the keys to the sparkling Renault, it's headlights gleaming like lizard eyes next to his Rover on the drive.

Two decades, a score - well, it's a long time or so it's seemed – it’s seemed forever, but that's from my perspective you see - a mere acorn splash in the pond for most of you oldsters, mere plankton in the oceans of time. Mind you it's been hard work getting here, through the plagues of teenie acne, the trials of puberty and the curse of becoming so very self-aware. Tomorrow marks the watershed, tomorrow takes me further into oldsterdom, tomorrow I'll become one of those dreaded twenty somethings!

So how about the riddle then, this cryptic conundrum the wise one has set? Well, it's in the form of a number of questions - twenty questions need you ask? Each of the questions has a numerical answer and supposedly draws on the vast amount of trivial and inconsequential knowledge I've accumulated during my years.

For example -
Q - "How many sides does a Rhombus have?"
A - "Four”

Or
Q - "In nursery rhyme folk lore how many blackbirds were baked in the pie?"
A - Four and twenty or 24, of course -

Yes, easy you may think but that’s just the start, as for the rest of them, well you don't want to know. You simply wouldn't believe!

Then at the end of the questions, Father has created an obtuse algebraic equation utilising all the answers which have also been lettered thus i.e. Q1 = A, Q2 = B, etc for some, others just using the numbers to subtract, add or multiply in the rest of the equation, if you get the idea. After I've completed the maths then the riddle will be solved and in theory the keys to the spanking new car will at last be mine. Yes, pity I'll allow you to feel for me for being so unfortunate to have been brought into this world by a man who obtains such perverse gratification from such folly. The bastard was my class teacher for two years!

That afternoon, I spent hours finding answers to the questions - the car was to be mine tomorrow at any cost! But there comes a time when enough is enough. Enough ruminating on the riddle for now, this was to be my last ever night as a teenager. The hounds of oldsterdom were snapping on my heels, but they would not have me yet! I was to go out, the final stand of my teenage years had to be made. I called up a few of my friends. I was to shoot some pool at Reilly's Emporium and quench my thirst with sickly alcopops for the last time ever as a ‘teenage dirtbag’.

Morning came and I woke into the new era, my score of years complete. I looked at the half empty bottle of 'Mad-Dog' next to my bed, grappling with the hangover I had to share this brave new start with. God, never again - now I've entered this new dawn of maturity I'll have to start drinking Smeaton's Mild or some other oldster brew. I got up and yawned, it was beginning to soak in - I was now a twenty-something. Apprehensively I looked in the mirror for those telltale oldster signs, a fresh wrinkle on my brow? Had the glimmer of youth been sapped from my eyes?

Now there was just one question left unanswered in the riddle - I racked my sore head. I'd never get it! Then it came - the flash of divine inspiration from nowhere.

The riddle now was now nearing completion - I could almost hear the ignition firing as I slip on to those PVC seats and turn those keys. That's it - all the clues had been realised, the numbers assembled in the equation and ready to be computed. The maths wasn't as difficult as I feared, at one stage I thought I'd have to consult my book of logarithms but no - he hadn't been that cruel, not this time.
Frantically, I press in the digits on my pocket calculator, wiping my brow as I repeat it just to make sure - then check and double check again. Now the confidence of success welling inside me, I scribble down the answer on the bottom of my cigarette packet and walk into the oldster’s bedroom a proud man with two decades behind me. My dad, he wishes me a happy birthday and then he's just there smiling, before he quips,
"And the answer to the riddle?"
I pause for a moment, trying not to crease over, "And the answer, the answer is T............................"