Aging Gracefully Is Cracking Me Up

Oh, this aging thing is going to be so much fun.

So much mystery, so many options, so many chances to make the right choices to prolong our lives, except when we make the wrong choices that make us go splat like spoiled tomatoes, depending on what study we read on which day of the week.

The Associated Press reported last week that, contrary to earlier advice, it may be OK to take hormone replacement therapy to tame the sleeplessness and hot flashes of menopause. But only if women start taking the pills in their 50s. And even then only sometimes, because other times it could kill us, which is still better than all the time, which is what researchers were telling us two years ago.

If you think you are either too young or the wrong gender to care about any of this, think again. Every time a middle-aged woman is not forced to strip down to her control tops in the grocery line so that she can breathe, the world is a better place.

It takes foresight to age gracefully in America, which is what I tried to explain recently to a young reporter who, during an interview, threw this question at me like a spitball: "So, how old are you, anyway?"

This, I told myself, was one of those "teachable moments" my friends say Dr. Phil is always talking about.

"I'll be 50 next month," I said, cool as a jet stream. No age-fudging fancy dance for me.

She was unimpressed. "Why do women do that?" she said. "Why do they always feel the need to tell me what age they're going to be, instead of what they are?"

Must I explain everything ?

"We're bracing ourselves for what's coming," I said.

Last year, on the morning of my 49th birthday, I woke up to NPR's usual assortment of news from around the world. Staring up at the ceiling, all I could think was: "My God, I'm going to be 50."

Nora Ephron documented this folly of female-dom in her 1989 movie, "When Harry Met Sally." Every woman I know — the ones who watch "Dr.

Phil" and the ones who never will — is already nodding her head. All women of a certain age remember this scene in the movie that was really about my life, if you don't count the deli scene, and I wish you could but I was never that brave, even though there were men who deserved it.

Anyway, in this particular scene Meg Ryan, who plays Sally, is sitting on the edge of her bed snotting up one Kleenex after another because her former boyfriend, who never wanted to get married, has just told her he's getting married. ( Hate when that happens.)

Billy Crystal plays Harry, her longtime friend who's about to blow a decade of friendship by becoming her lover for only one night. Don't get me started. But first, he stands helplessly by as Sally's nose grows redder than a radish, until she finally wails, "And I'm going to be 40!"

"When?" he asks, his face a cross between concern and horror.

She squeezes out the answer between sobs: "Some. Daaaay."

All of us are 18 years older now, including Ryan, which brings me to Alessandra Stanley's recent piece in The New York Times about the growing number of primetime TV roles for aging female film actors. Today's middle-age women solve crimes, cuss like Rambo and still have sex, sometimes with younger men, which could never work for those of us who fight the urge to pat them on the back and burp them.

These shows cater to baby boomers refusing to cede the dance floor to women who can still wear braless halters and rhinestone thongs without cracking up at their reflections in the dressing room. In fact, it helps if these older actresses are funny.

"Aging has worked better as a laughing matter," Stanley writes.

My stomach hurts, I'm howling so hard.

Wait a minute.

Is that a sign of menopause?

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… And His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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