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This June is a big month for me because it’s the time of year when I officially switch from drinking hot coffee to iced coffee. It’s also when I get to break out my flip-flops. Oh, yeah . . . and, um, I’m turning 40 this month.

Honestly, it’s really exciting and I’d have to say that the only thing about turning 40 that I’m not looking forward to is turning 40. Other than that, I’m thrilled!

For example, now that I’ll be in my 40s, I can finally say that I’m older than every single currently active professional athlete. How cool is that?! Oh, wait, that’s not so cool at all. It’s terrifying. I mean, how stupid will I look at the U.S. Open this year when I’m trying to get Rafael Nadal to sign my giant tennis ball? Answer: very. Read the Rest of the Story

Last week I learned that I had a near miss with catastrophe, and I didn’t even know it. I shudder to think how close I was to disaster.

My sister, who has apparently never met me, was planning the dreaded 40th birthday surprise party.

Thank God she abandoned her efforts before calamity could strike.

To say I don’t like surprises would be an understatement. If there is anything I like less than being surprised, it is being surprised while a roomful of people watches me. I hate to be the center of attention, or to have people looking at me. Turning 40 is alarming enough in and of itself — I don’t need to do it with an audience.

I know what you’re thinking: if I hate to be the center of attention, why do I put the details of my life out there on the interwebz for total strangers to read? That’s TOTALLY different. I would argue, in fact, that writing is the perfect hobby for an attention-phobe like me. I can put my carefully edited and polished thoughts out there for you to read while I hide safely behind my computer screen. But those of you who have suggested that I should turn some of this stuff into a stand-up comedy routine? Fugeddaboudit.

Check out the comic

My 40th birthday is just around the bend. In fact, it’s coming at me like a teenage boy in his daddy’s sports car with a backseat full of girls he’s trying to impress. Sigh. I’d much prefer to think that middle age was still taking its sweet time to get here— much like a silver-headed granny driving the precious cargo that is her grandchildren as she takes the Maximum Speed Limit to the letter of the law and then drops it by five miles per hour.

At whatever speed it traveled to get to me, I suppose there’s no point denying that it did. So I sit here pondering the advice and declarations of my senior sisters, who warned me years ago that it pretty much all boils down to gravity.

For the last year or so, there’s been a book called “The Secret” at or near the top of the nonfiction bestseller list, its reign broken only by Steven Colbert’s outstanding “I Am America And So Can You!” and various other short-term winners. I have no earthly clue what the book’s about, as I tend to regard anyone claiming to have deduced “the secret” to anything with the sort of dubious caution normally reserved for streetcorner Rolex salesmen and infomercials.

However, I’ve discovered a secret of my own that far outweighs anything peddled by any bestselling author or anyone with a bunch of silly college degrees or actual formal schooling: the secret of youth. Specifically, it’s the secret to guys turning 40, like your humble scribe, keeping their youthful outlook and demeanor. All you have to do is wait until your late 30s to start having children.

I spent a lot of years convinced that I had no business proliferating my own sort of genetic weirdness and sending more little Wilsons out into the world. It took a good woman who knew me far better than I know myself and in whom I found endless wonder, challenge and delight to convince me otherwise. Never in my life has a change of mind turned out better. Alex and Cooper, my sons, have taught me that I had only scratched the surface of my capacity to love, and that my capacity for patience still needs quite a bit of work.

BY MEREDITH C. CARROLL

Being middle-aged has taken quite a beating as of late. The Food and Drug Administration issued a warning last week that Botox injections — the saving grace for those with rapidly maturing foreheads — can result in serious adverse reactions, including death.

Forty-seven-year-old Columbia University and Harvard Law School graduate Barack Obama has been dogged in recent weeks by critics who say the junior senator from Illinois is too young and inexperienced to be a replacement for the guy who cites Colgate toothpaste as the thing he has in common with the former Prime Minster of the United Kingdom. And now comes word indicting the fifth decade of life as the worst.

According to a recent study, people are more likely to be “truly miserable” in their 40s than at any other time. Researchers say one possible reason is that it could be the period in life when people realize their dreams will likely go unfulfilled. Another theory is that people start to die more frequently after hitting the big 4-0, which in turn is a reminder to survivors of their own mortality and impending death.