By one of those coincidences that follow writers around I have recently had three conversations and a letter about the same subject…how to deal with the continuous assumptions of society that after forty, or maybe even thirty, everyone is on the way to being decrepit, a victim of Alzheimer’s or a permanent inhabitant of a wheel chair.

It seems that all the Madison Avenue people spend millions of dollars convincing people forty and over that they are past it. IT is never really defined. It’s left to the negativity of the individual and the public consensus to figure out that life is over, and now it’s all downhill.