Shoppers Magazine 02

SIMBA SHOPPERS MAGAZINE - THE CHRISTMAS ISSUE
THE THIRTY-YEAR-OLD
SINGLE WOMAN
the island of lost men
By Ciku Muriuki
When a woman gets to my age (15 years
old with 15 years of experience), and she is
still single, there is a flurry of attempts to
“hook her up”. Everyone she knows wants
to set her up with their single brothers,
sons, nephews, friends, neighbors, butchers...because
God forbid she gets to the
dreaded 35 without a husband. (I mean,
what is it with 35? What happens then? Is
there an apocalyptic event that takes place
in one’s ovaries as soon as one arrives
at that age? But I digress.) People start
inviting you to all sorts of events; where
they will “casually” introduce you to an
acquaintance of theirs, then sidle away,
leaving you and this complete stranger
staring at each other, knowing that you’ve
just been had. Often, these wildly transparent
efforts are pointless, but sometimes,
you are introduced to a guy whom you
find interesting enough to agree to go on a
date with.
This happened to me a few months ago.
One of my best friends had been talking
about this guy, saying that I had to meet
him. She talked him up like she was going
to earn some sort of pimp allowance, waxing lyrical about his devastating good looks, his
intelligence, his razor-sharp wit, and the fact that he ALWAYS smelt very, very good. Ok,
you may think that last one is a little over the top, but you have to understand. Having
met my fair share of men who smell like they have just finished a 12 hour shift at the local
council dump, this was a very important selling point for me.
Love cannot blossom if I’m holding my breath and counting the seconds until you leave
so I can stagger out onto my balcony to take desperate gulps of clean air. No sir. A man
needs to smell like he at least has an on-going relationship with a bar of soap and a
shower stall. So anyway, after her thirtieth PowerPoint presentation extolling this man’s
virtues, I caved and allowed her to set something up.
When a woman gets to my age (15 years old
with 15 years of experience), and she is still
single, there is a flurry of attempts to “hook
her up”. Everyone she knows wants to set
her up with their single brothers, sons, nephews,
friends, neighbors, butchers...because
God forbid she gets to the dreaded 35 without
a husband.
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