Headline May 30, 2018/ ''' PARENTS - -50s++ PULITZER '''

''' PARENTS - -50s++ PULITZER '''

''WELL MOMMY -DEAR- YOU'RE not very old at all, but you're also very, very definitely,  not very young.''

IF YOU PARENTS WANT to know how old they look, just have them walk into a French cafe. It's like a public referendum on their  face.

When I moved to Paris in my early 30s, waiter called me ''madamoiselle''.
It was ''Bonjour, madamoiselle'' when I walked into a cafe and  ''Voila, mademoiselle'' as they sat  down a coffee.

Around the time I turned 40, however there was a collective switch, and waiters started calling me ''madame''. These ''madames'' were tentative at first, but soon they were coming at me like a hailstorm.

Now it is ''Bonjour, madame,'' when i walk in,'' Merci, madame'' when i pay my bill and ''Au revoir, madame'' as I leave. Sometimes several waiters shout this at once.

On one hand, I'm intrigued by this transition. Do these waiters gather after work for Sancerre and a slide show to decide which female customers to downgrade? {Irritatingly men are ''monsieur''  forever}.

The worst part is they're trying to be polite. They believe I'm old enough that the title can't possibly wound.

I realize that something has permanently shifted when I walk past a women begging for money.

''Bonjour, Madameoiselle,'' she calls out to the young woman in a miniskirt a few steps ahead of me,

''Bonjour, madame,'' she says when I pass.

This has all happened too for me to digest. I still have most of the clothes that I wore as a  madamemoiselle. There are mademoiselle-era cans of food in my pantry.

But the world keeps telling me I've entered a new stage, While studying my face in a well-lit  elevator, my daughter describes it bluntly :
''Mommy, you're not old, but you're definitely not young.''

What exactly is this not-young age?  I hear people in their 20s describe the 40s as far-off decades of too-late, when they'll regret things that they haven't done.

But for the older people I meet, the 40s are the decade that they would most like to travel back to.

''How could I have possibly thought of myself as old at 40.?'' asks Stanley Brandes, an anthropologist who wrote a book in 1985 about turning 40.

''I sort of look back and think, God, how lucky I was. I see at as the beginning of life, not the beginning of the end,''

Forty is not even technically middle age anymore. Someone who is now 40 has a 50 percent chance of living to 94, says the economist Andrew Scott, a co-author of  ''The 100-Year Life''.

But the number 40 still has symbolic resonance. Jesus fasted for 40 days.

Prophet Mohammad was 40 when the archangel Gabriel appeared to him. The Israelites wondered the desert for 40 years. Mr. Brandes writes that in some languages, 40 means ''a lot''.

And age 40 still feels pivotal. ''The 40s are when you become who you are,'' a British author in in his 70s tell me, adding ominously, ''And if you don't know by your 40s, you never will.''

I'm starting to see that as a madame, even a newly minted one, i am subject to new rules. When I try to act adorably naive now, people aren't charmed - they're baffled.

Cluelessness no longer with my face. I'm expected to wait in the correct line at airport and show up on time for my appointments.

And yet brain research shows that in the 40s, some of these tasks are harder :

On average we're more easily distracted than the younger people, we digest information more slowly and we're worse at remembering specific facts. 

The Honor and Serving of the latest Operational Research on Parents, Parenting, Aging and the world continues. And The World Students Society thanks author, mother, and researcher Pamela Druckerman

With most respectful dedication to the Parents, Leaders, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world.

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Good Night and God Bless

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