Melville Cooke

I have been a father for nearly eight years, but I found out that I was a 'Daddy', in Jamaican terms, last week.

It was, to say the least, amazing to have this peculiar term, a combination of respect and dismissal (proportions thereof dependent on tone of voice and circumstances) which I associate with people who are not only eligible to join the senior citizens line but also look it, at 35 years old. (OK, OK, nearly 36.)

It happened twice in one day, the first off Maxfield Avenue in the mid-morning when a young man, shirtless and hair grown past Afro stage but not yet long enough to defy combing, passed me sitting in a car twice.

On the third occasion, he asked, "yu arright Daddy?" If I had not been sure that we were the only persons within earshot of relatively normal conversation (this is, after all, Jamaica, where a friendly exchange can sound like the prelude to another Bush invasion), I would have looked around to see who he was talking to.

I felt like saying 'wrong columnist, wrong newspaper, 'Daddy Oh' is Tony Robinson'. As it was I said "yah man".

The entry into 'Daddyland' would have passed unnoticed if not for the reinforcement in the night at a gas station in Cross Roads, when an even younger man asked "how much gas, Daddy?"

Once again, I meekly accepted my forced graduation into the ranks of the near geriatrics and coughed up the required amount of 87 unleaded.

Attrition rate

OK, so the light shrubbery which passes for my whiskers has a few strands of grey, which are longer and more unruly than the black they stand out from and against. But I certainly do not think that I qualify for 'Daddyhood', not by about at least 15 years.

For me, 'Daddy' is an honour that a man should earn by the evidence of the years required, if not for wisdom then certainly for enough experience to know the difference between a fad (the Macarena) and a societal shift (the wonderful bikini) on his face.

It is not, despite the tendency to sling it around like election promises, a title to be taken lightly.

Then it struck me: in both circumstances I was addressed as 'Daddy' by young men from the lower economic (certainly in the case of the latter) and address (certainly in the case of the first) strata. And in that world, for a man 35 is old. Hell, 30 is nearing retirement.

I am 'Daddy' to them simply because in their reality a man actually getting out of his 20s without the visible signs of a rough passage or the hardened look of someone who has created a rough passage for others is oh so rare. Heck, for them actually getting out of the 20s may be something notable in itself. And I went from amazement to sadness.

Jamaica is, of course, a predominantly youthful society, but within even that there are areas where older, undamaged (at least to the cursory inspection) men are rare enough to be remarkable.

The atrocious attrition rate of young men is stock in trade for the news and cause for sky-high motor vehicle insurance premiums for young male drivers. When I hear of a man who is over 30 who is killed and is not a 'businessman', it strikes me. Murders of 17, 18 and 19-year-olds are, unfortunately, so regular as to be unremarkable.

Some triumph

I must confess, though, that with sadness at the realisation that, at 35, I am a 'Daddy' to young men from the lower social and economic bracket comes a certain sense of triumph.

I have got to this age without being shot or even shot at; without going to jail (although there was that policeman near Moneague in St. Ann who did his best to change that, after I protested when he framed me with a speeding ticket); without having formed alliances with shady characters who I now wish to shed, and without having a contentious relationship with a bad breed babymother who I wish I had not bedded and bred.

And I have moved out of the age range where I am likely to be a footnote on the news. Not that it cannot happen, but it is more likely that a deranged deportee Toyota Corolla will get me than some dunce who feels that I have 'dissed' him.

For a man in this country that is a lot, not of my own doing but through sheer luck, dismissal of materialism, a healthy respect for the effect of bullets on skin and the early realisation that Rambo and Terminator are not real, an aversion to being led by anyone (including Jesus) and firm condoms (or maybe an infirm instrument). And I am oh so grateful, 'Daddy' and all.