SO YOU'RE SEVENTY, SO WHAT? Introduction

  

                    CHAPTER ONE

                   

                                                 Introduction

          I once knew the definition of “old.” It was anyone twenty years older than I was.

         At age forty-nine, my friends and I made a lot of arrogant snap judgments, imagining we knew over-the-hill when we saw it . . . you know, the snow-capped head, the forward-tilted posture, the scurrying out for dinner at four in the afternoon.

         Who knew how fast those twenty years would melt away—or how anything-but-old most of us would then feel?

           Now that my husband and I sometimes head out for dinner at 4:15 (because how else will I make the class I teach at 6:30?) or occasionally, like Seinfeld’s parents, because we’re simply hell bent on making Soup Plantation’s Early Bird special . . . now that I haven’t seen my real hair color in this century . . . it’s time to declare that “old” must mean some other age. And someone else. Surely it doesn’t apply to me.

           And if it doesn’t, why not? 

           Herein I offer the little bag of tricks that can make Seventy seem even younger than middle-aged . . . or anyway, younger than you once believed.  

            P.S. YOU’LL NOTICE THAT THIS book, besides sporting large type, is largely autobiographical. As with my writing books, it’s easiest to teach from experiences I’ve actually lived through—from the various situations I know first-hand.