Jack Tame: Suffering the ravages of Tame

Jack Tame is approaching the ripe old age of 28. Photo / Greg Bowker

Opinion

Time is ticking for old man Tame.

Yes, yes, go ahead and scoff. Your taunts fall on fast-deafening ears and even if you're sympathetic, it shan't be long before my only comfort is the discounted ferry pass I get with my Gold Card.

The age may seem the luxury of youth to some but I have one month until I turn 28. Four short weeks until I leave 27 on the slip-'n'-slide-but-mainly-slip to seniority. Four short weeks to debut for the All Blacks, publish a universally acclaimed mathematics paper and pen a generation-defining album.

I'm not saying life ends at 28. My grandma has 60 years on my looming landmark and has just returned from an intrepid trip to Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam. She's off to Iran this year.

But perhaps unlike any other milestone that I've gaily skipped by, the various rules of 27 are wearing me down. My back seizes, I've a bung shoulder and my knee sometimes creaks like a farm gate with a dodgy hinge.

"You've physically peaked," my friend's dad announced to his son the day he turned 28.

"You'll never be physically fitter than it's possible to be today, boy. It's downhill from here-on out."

Happy Birthday, indeed.

I googled it, though, and he's definitely right. Only three All Blacks in the professional era were older than 27 on debut and in almost every major sport, players peak at or before my age. You know things are getting bad when golf's your only hope.

I've been told mathematicians and financial traders peak in their 20s, too, and I couldn't so much as muster the 11 times tables these days.

If I've a better chance of achieving greatness in my last weeks of 27-dom, the original 27 Club could still be my best bet: Johnson. Morrison. Hendrix. Winehouse. Cobain.

Tame.

Damn. Still, I suppose even if I'm not a drug-addled musical genius there's one major benefit in not joining the 27 Club.

As it so happens, I fancy I'll rather like 28.

• Jack Tame is on Newstalk ZB, Saturdays, 9am-midday.