Welcome to your middle-age body! This is your owner's manual.

Delivery: You will note that your middle-age body arrived far earlier than you anticipated. No need to thank us. If you feel you have received this body in error, too bad.

New and Improved: Your middle-age body is more roomy and better cushioned than your old body. We've added padding to areas where it is most visible so that other people will be envious. And you know how teenage girls wear their pants really tight? With your new body, all your clothes will fit like that! Think how stylish you'll be! How constrained! How unable to sit down!

Fun and Exciting: You may notice that you have started to experience the following: sleeplessness, hot flashes, cold sweats. These are all symptoms of a medical condition known as "parenthood." Nothing can help you enjoy the sensation of being older than to have children tell you that your clothing, music, hairstyle and opinions are out of date.

If you've avoided being a parent up until now, please know that medical science is working feverishly to extend the years of fertility. And of course, you can always adopt someone, like Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt. (Actually, you probably can't adopt someone like Angelina or Brad — they're grown people. But think how great it would be if you could. Talk about fun and exciting! Probably make middle age a lot easier to deal with, too.)

Revised Operating Instructions: A middle-age body is like a finely tuned racing machine — a machine in desperate need of repair. Your doctor will have many pills for you to swallow and will provide you with a list of activities separated into two categories: those you cannot do and those you shouldn't do. Your joints have probably already begun to talk about the things you can't do, and the things you shouldn't do are restricted to those activities that you really want to do.

Random-Access Memory: Recent improvements in data storage means you will be able to remember with utter clarity a picnic you took when you were 14 years old, but you will spend two hours looking for your car keys.

You'll find yourself starting a sentence with a declaration like, "There are three things we must keep in mind," and then find yourself wondering what in the world the third one was, or even whether you got the second one right.

You'll pick up a book and halfway into it realize you've read it before, though by the end of the thing you'll no longer be sure. We've made additional improvements to your memory, but let's be frank: You're probably not going to remember the ones we've already listed.

Brand-New Package: Remember when people used to say to you that "you're so young"? You're never going to hear that anymore unless you go to Florida and join a bridge club. Instead, you'll hear, "You look really good for your age," which is so exactly the opposite it makes you want to grit your teeth, except that doing so might damage your new bridgework. Inside, though, you'll feel absolutely no different, especially if you're a man and you take one of the new little pills available today — you'll feel like a teenager again, which your wife will find really annoying.

Known Bugs: While we've had your whole life to develop your middle-age body, there are some known deficiencies we are still working on at the time of release. The worst of these is "version skew" between your brain's perceptions and your body's aptitudes. You still think you can play a game of backyard football and be tackled and get back up without two people helping you. You still think you can travel coast to coast without taking a nap for three days. You still think you can sneeze — sneeze! — without your back muscles sinking their fangs into your spine and paralyzing you for a week.

We're working on these problems and expect to have them fixed when we deliver the next model, your "senior" body. Until then, please enjoy your middle-age body, because what other choice do you have?

To write Bruce Cameron, visit his Website at www.wbrucecameron.com. To find out more about Bruce Cameron and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.

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