Caroline, you’re a Troublemaker. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

As far as women handling middle-age better than men, that may be true in the larger sense, but it’s still a person-by-person thing. For me, middle-aged male angst is captured perfectly in a line from “Moonstruck”, which goes something like “a man wakes up one morning and realizes his life means nothing, and that’s a bad, crazy day,” I got a head start on misery by virtue of being raised Roman Catholic. That’s pre-Vatican II RC. Offer up your pain to God, children.

…seriously now. We should totally stop talking about my dad’s STDs from the sixties.

I too, went through the ‘no longer young/attractive’ thing in my mid-forties. It felt devastating. A few of you know enough about my relationships after that to know how I compensated.

Then, about five years ago, a few things came together to jump me up to the next plateau of terror. One thing was a two-year prostate cancer scare.

For much of that time, I had a urologist who was hell-bent on performing a prostatectomy, which had about an 80% likelihood of breaking my favorite toy. And leaving me in diapers for the rest of my life, as a charming added fillip. Killing me if it was too late or incomplete.

Fortunately, I finally ended up with a guy who had some actual clinical and diagnostic skills.

But — I finally got the point. I’m gonna die. It may be as soon as next year, it may be thirty or more years from now. But it’s coming. and it’s likely closer than the day of my entering this world.

I didn’t feel much benefit from having that insight. And, again, some of you got to watch how graceful I was as I worked my way through it during the early part of the decade. (Watching my beloved country trying so hard to enact Orwell’s ’1984′ was glorious icing on the cake.)

This isn’t about me being special in any way. Most of us who post here are entering the range where we realize, more than intellectually, that our bodies are getting ready to sneak up on us in the middle of our dreams, and murder us. We visit the doctor more often than we used to, with more foreboding.

Sometimes, some days, that means that I seem to have a choice between histrionic sorrow and frat-boy humor, when the aging process is discussed.

I’m more balanced about it than I was for a long time, but I had to make a conscious decision to lighten up a lot on the subject.

And, dammit, I’m still waiting for, and mostly believing in, the possibility of the Nanotech Singularity, immortality, interstellar travel, space buddies, peace on Earth, goodwill to men.

And… well, you know…