I will die next year. That is not a nice start to a column, but unfortunately it is no different. Am I terminally ill? Not that I know. How do I know that I will come to my final end this year? It’s just like that. Because I’m going to set off life-threatening German fireworks during the turn of the year? Like the Panzerfaust 270? No. Will I go to China unvaccinated? Also not. Long weekend Kiev? No way. No, I’m just dying here on an Amsterdam sidewalk. Simply because I almost got killed there three times in recent months due to a bad nose on an e-bike. Indeed, by a pathetic VanMoof boomer. And you know: four times is a charm. So next time it’s hit and I can sleep forever at Zorgvlied.
I hear you thinking: a bicycle on the sidewalk? Yes, because the road is usually blocked by a van from the parcel mafia. The driver of such a bitch spends fifteen minutes ringing the bell at at least seven or so houses in the hope of losing his package of Hema dildos to one of the neighbours. Behind the van is an Albert Heijn truck, which comes to replenish the weekly Chardonnay stock at other elderly neighbors. They no longer dare to go to the supermarket because they are not only too lame to walk, but also for fear that they will be shoveled at sixty kilometers per hour by a retired psychopath on a fat bike. Or by a blind speed camera driver.
It’s an epidemic. The entire Amsterdam mountain for the elderly cycles electrically and they all feel like a Jonas Vingegaard during a final sprint of a decisive Tour stage. It is touching how you see my generation rushing to their urn. Voluntary euthanasia. From January 1, many inner city residents wear a helmet. Just as a precaution.
Meanwhile, every ER is full of broken collarbones moaning that they couldn’t do anything about it. Usually the pedestrians are dead and the cyclists themselves are injured. They complain: who the hell walks on a sidewalk when you’re just racing at fifty kilometers per hour?
The best thing about these suicidal e-bikers is what they scream in panic. Usually something with an incurable disease. Recently I got two ailments at the same time from a sad cyclist. Ten minutes later I was standing next to him at the bar of my regular coffee shop. I asked him if he was a doctor. He wanted to know why I asked. “Because you just called me an elderly cancer mongoloid.” He couldn’t remember. So Alzheimer’s. He asked if I was a doctor. Two beers later he said he wasn’t talking to me. But he called his ex while cycling.
Calling on your bike is not allowed, I thought coyly and laughed because I live in the city where they sell fireworks that you are not allowed to set off. You can’t say that our mayor Femke Halsema doesn’t have a sense of humor.
Then I disappeared into the newspaper. Pele dead. Brazil in tears for three days nationally. What did we actually do when Johan was dead? Slap talk at the twenty talk show tables. I also read that the Tax and Customs Administration has a huge staff shortage, so that no declaration is properly checked. I called my accountant at KPMG and summoned her that my wife’s car will go to work from now on, that our holiday home will become my 100 percent deductible workplace, that from now on all private dinners will also be business, that the wines from the will still be staged as a representation last Christmas dinner, just like our upcoming trip to Paris and that we will visit a ballet performance during our upcoming summer holiday, so that the entire holiday is businesslike. My accountant laughed. Why? Because they’ve been doing this for me for years. Just like for all customers. Then she asked if I wanted to gift myself anything this fiscal year?
“Have a VanMoof!” I laughed and wished her a prosperous 2023. She me too.
A version of this article also appeared in the December 31, 2022 newspaper