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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.

I vividly remember trying out for the drill team in high school. At that point I was unaware of just how uncoordinated and dorky I am, so I didn't realize what a bad idea this was. In practice I did fine. But when the time came to perform my little routine in front of judges, I froze. Totally forgot what I was doing and screwed it up worse than even I could have imagined. It’s a good thing I didn’t make the team — I guess I hadn’t figured out that if I did, an entire football stadium full of people would be looking at me every Friday night.

The year my oldest niece was born, I was Mary in our church's Christmas play. This was mostly because it made sense to have my four-week-old niece play the part of Baby Jesus, and my sister, who was our music director and would be otherwise occupied, wouldn’t let anyone else hold her for the duration of the show.

All I had to do was walk down the aisle with Joseph, sit down and hold the baby. No acting required. No lines to memorize. In fact, once the music started up again, no one would be looking at me anyway. How tough could it be?

I was a nervous wreck.

You should have seen the look on my face when my high school principal told me I was the class salutatorian and would be making a speech at graduation. I didn’t sleep for a week.

I think in some hidden room of my subconscious, my attention phobia is one of the reasons I’ve managed to avoid marriage, or at least a wedding. I can’t imagine anything worse than having to kiss someone in front of church full of people.

The weirdest thing about all this is that I’m not exactly a wallflower. In the company of friends and family, I’m outspoken to the point of obnoxious. I crack jokes. I have a hellacious cackle of a laugh. It’s not like I blend into the woodwork.

But put me on a stage, literal or figurative, and I can’t handle it.

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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.

“Oh, honey, you start waking up in the middle of the night and then, before you know it, you’ve got bags the size of those Prada totes that are sold for thousands on the pages of Vogue.”

“My upper arms make me look a lot friendlier than I feel with all that waving they’re doing.”

“How much do you love it that Britney Spears’ rump has started to sag? If that youngster is suffering from continental drift, it’s no wonder my land mass is a case of full scale plate tectonics.”

“The only magazine cover I could ever grace is one of those topless tribal tributes in National Geographic. Hmmm. The Suburban Tribe of Almaden? I might as well go in for the piercings and have my people get in touch with the editors.”

The funny thing is, I only seemed to notice when my pals were talking about gravity in the physical sense of the word. You know, in the way Sir Isaac Newton intended it to be. It never even occurred to me that there would be a sense of emotional gravity to come along with it.

Yes, I realize this makes me a little too literal, and also explains the rash that climbs up my neck whenever someone brings up the subject of poetry. All I know is I should’ve spent as much time preparing my psyche as I did my vessel when I assessed myself with all those rounds of Body Part Limbo while doing my best Chubby Checker impression of “How low can you go?”

Now that the Big One is upon me, I see that the emotional issues that invade a middle-aged mind have twice the gravitational pull as their physical counterpart. I’m no physicist, but I am thinking that if you don’t take conscious steps to counter them — or dress in 50 pounds of magnetic shield — it’ll be enough to suck you into the depths of the earth’s core.

You see, at 40, all of a sudden it makes sense to ponder whether you embarked upon the right path in life, instead of forging ahead robotically while whacking away at the wild tundra in front of you, as you did throughout your thirties. You can’t help but wonder if one of the choices you made along the way might have led you to a different career, different relationships, better health and finances. And as you get all Robert Frost about your own “road not taken,” you also cope with the fear that own your parents might soon hit the end of their path, or that your children are starting down one you don’t approve of.

These issues invade your busy mind the only chance they can—when you finally have a moment to catch your breath. After work. After your volunteer commitments at the school. After you chauffeur the kids to their sports and hobbies. After homework. After dinner and laundry. Okay, and after a glass of wine and an episode of “Desperate Housewives.”

It’s got me thinking that our physical slide may have very little to do with Newtons’s theories, and way more to do with Eeyore’s. But you won’t find this girl sticking around in a boggy place too long. I’ll be skidding out of there whenever I can, because even an up and coming granny knows when to put the pedal to the metal. And, sugar, this joy ride has nothing to do with impressing teenage girls and everything to do with preserving the sanity of middle-aged ones.

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Shana McLean Moore is a resident of Almaden Valley. She invites you to listen to her free podcast and read more of her columns by visiting www.caffeintedponderings.com.

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.

It’s not all that sort of touchy-feely stuff, though. Take this afternoon, for example: I piloted my trusty Dodge Ram to the local home improvement joint and purchased one of the largest backyard playsets known to mankind for Alex’s third birthday. According to the trusty apron-wearing fellows who helped me load the boxes into the truck, the assembly will require 24 hours of labor by two people. How long it will take for one moderately skilled suburban dad with a full-time job and two classes this semester remains to be seen. I’m hoping to have it finished before Alex goes to middle school.

I’ve got acquaintances my own age who have kids. Their kids are in high school, heading off to college or threatening to make them grandparents. When I tell them I’ve got a toddler and an infant in the house, their initial reaction is to doubt my sanity and remind me that I’ll be pushing 60 when Cooper graduates high school. Almost always, though, they immediately begin interrogating me as to whether Alex is going to play tee ball, if he’s learned to throw a football yet and when I plan on getting him his own set of golf clubs. I hear a wistfulness in their tone, remembering when parenting was a simpler proposition and Daddy was the unquestioned authority on everything from why rain fell to how birds flew.

While they spend their quality time with their kids visiting college campuses and doing all the other work required before we turn our offspring loose on an unsuspecting world, I spend mine teaching Alex how to dig holes in the mulch pile and working on Cooper’s skills at the all-important art of rolling over. I wash and mix bottles, change diapers, answer myriad “why?” questions and try to explain in as even tones as possible that using crayons to color on the pages of Daddy’s books is not a good thing.

This summer, I have high hopes for teaching Alex the fine art of dangling a piece of Niblets corn in front of a perch in a manner that will cause the fish to pounce on it like a shark on a tourist. Some of my friends are looking forward to taking the tops off their German roadsters. I’m looking forward to teaching Alex the mysteries of the Zebco 404 rod and reel combo.If you’d asked me 20, 10 or even five years ago, I would have given you a list of things I thought I would be, do or have by age 40. Almost none of those, other than the salt-and-pepper hair and penchant for bad puns, have actually come to pass. I find myself not terribly saddened by my inability to Nostradamus my own future. Yes, I’ll be spending the years when most guys are learning new hobbies going to school plays and baseball games … and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

I turn 40 on Saturday. If you’re buying me a present, remember that I want it black with black leather interior and at least 8 cylinders. I’m planning on starting my midlife crisis soon, and I’ll need to be ready. Got a rant? A rave? Bigfoot tearing up your petunias? Drop me a line, anytime!

Reprinted by Permission. Distributed by Internet Broadcasting. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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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.

In further depressing news for forty-somethings, it appears as if the downward middle age spiral doesn’t discriminate. It hits those married and single, wealthy and destitute, as well as those with or without children. It remains to be seen whether the information in the study is so depressing that it will negatively affect people in their 30s who are now inevitably becoming painfully aware of what’s in store for them.

On a more uplifting note, the study found that those who make it to the age of 70 in good physical condition will enjoy the same mental health and happiness as a 20-year-old — just as long as it’s a 20-year-old who hasn’t heard what could very well happen once 40 hits. (Cue golf claps.)

Of course there are plenty of people who never experience a blue period in their 40s.

At least not solely by virtue of being middle-aged. Another recently released study suggests the future is “bleak” for people whose spouses get on their nerves. The research found that the longer a couple stays together, the more they irk each other.

Nitpicking that at one time is found to be only mildly annoying can develop into a majorly thorny issue as the years of marital bliss progress.

And it turns out that as the husband/wife relationship deteriorates, it makes other relationships seem rosy by comparison. The study says that’s because people can weed out friends, ditching those who never cease causing aggravation.

Unfortunately, though, it’s never quite as easy to scrap a spouse.

But, according to a different study, holding on to a hated life partner could be good for longevity. Preliminary findings from a study out of the University of Michigan show that couples that fail to express their anger toward one another die way before than those who regularly duke it out. Not to mention couples that suppress their ire increase their likelihood of developing high blood pressure and heart disease.

In other words, people who survive the misery of their 40s and make it to 70 in okay shape — just in time to enjoy the same mental benefits of a 20-year-old — still enjoy good life expectancy rates as long as they share the rest of their lives with partners who make their skin crawl.

To be sure, there are plenty of advantages to being middle-aged that none of the studies mention. Car insurance rates are usually lower for drivers with long, clean records (although, of course, life insurance rates jump significantly after the age of 40). Forty-somethings usually stop getting seated at the kids’ table at family events, and move to the family table from the singles’ table at weddings and bar mitzvahs.

Also, forty-somethings are just a handful of years away from those coveted AARP memberships.

And turning 40 means it’ll only ever be another five years or so until 61-year-old Cher looks like she’s 40, too. Unless the FDA decides to ban Botox outright anytime soon, in which case Cher should age well past her 40s within a few months.

Aspen resident Meredith C. Carroll writes a Friday column in the Summit Daily News. E-mail questions or comments to meredithccarroll@hotmail.com.  Get Columnists Feeds