My sister turns sixty today, April 10 and it's pretty clear that she doesn't know where the time went. Nor do I. It's not possible that she's sixty. That would make me 57. Which I am but but but...

Does this every happen to you, that you have trouble believing that you are the age you are? I know what happened in my life. I even remember the 60s because, although it stuns people at times, I didn't do a lot of drugs back then. I didn't smoke dope (I highly approve of it and it's on my list of "painkillers that work" which I maintain in the back of my head.

I theorize that part of my inability to feel like a responsible adult at times comes from the lack of kids in my life. If you have children, you must, by definition, be a grown-up for all sorts of reasons. Explaining "why" to a child, getting her immunized, going to PTA meetings, sounding knowledgeable when he asks how the sun just hangs there (I don't actually know if that's a question kids ask but it sounded good to me), reading Pat the Bunny for the eightieth time. It means being responsible, patient, smart and dozens of things that to some degree, you get to avoid if you aren't raising someone. There are things I don't need to know, there are things I can't explain, and while I claim to have learned patience after a hospital stay that lasted five weeks, I don't have that sort of patience.

I feel like I fake it pretty well. I've worked, and I've found my way through many mazes of adult life, from Social Security and Medicare to learning data processing, data entry, computer carp that did not exist when I was a kid. I learned from relationships and succeeded at some and really bombed at others.

But. Pat is my only sibling and she's three years older than me. I always say that I feel like I stopped at some point. Maybe in my thirties or forties, but certainly I'm not 57 and she's not 60. That just can't be right. Er, can it?

Do you feel like you stopped? I don't mean out of vanity - I never pretend to be younger than I am, whether it's the Jack Benny eternal 39 or otherwise. There have been years when, looking back, i've been proud of getting there because I've had bad years. Some days it's hard to be me. Some years it was hard to get through all 12 months. So I've always been okay with the landmark birthdays of 30 and 40. Fifty? no big deal. But Pat turning 60 just seems so silly. it's not that I didn't believe we wouldn't get here, it's just that somehow I got stuck in time, when, at the same time, I've known that my life has gone on. Has this happened to you?