Article content continued

Being in his 40s would make his life much better, he explained.

For one, it would boost his dating prospects. “If you’re 69 on Tinder, you’re outdated,” reasoned Ratelband, who has seven children and is now without a partner. His friends urge him just to modify his age on dating apps. “But I don’t want to lie,” he said. “If you lie, you have to remember everything you say.”

It would also help him land more projects at work. The trainer and life coach – and baker and political provocateur in past lives – said potential clients ask him if he can “speak the language of young people” when he tells them his age. He assures them that he’s well-versed in the ways of the youth. But they’re skeptical, telling him that their other options are “young people in the gleam of their lives.” He assures them that he is more experienced, wiser and more knowledgeable, but he is beginning to think those attributes may not be enough.

He wants to be young again, and he has the physical fitness to match, Ratelband said.

His bones have grown approximately half of a nano millimeter over the last two years, he said. He has low blood pressure. His joints are working well. His eyesight is clear. His mental health is in top shape, he reported. “Well, everything, I guess,” he said. “I get it all checked every two years.”

This is what he told officials at the town hall, where he first went to ask for the change.

“Are you crazy?” they inquired, rejecting his request. It wasn’t his first brush with the officials there. Many years ago, they refused to let him name his twins, Rolls and Royce, after the carmaker. He continues to call them by these titles, but made their legal names France and Minou.