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    How Did I Get to Be Forty: And Other Atrocities
    How Did I Get to Be Forty: And Other Atrocities
    How Did I Get to Be Forty: And Other Atrocities
    Ebook98 pages26 minutes

    How Did I Get to Be Forty: And Other Atrocities

    By Judith Viorst

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    About this ebook

    And so you’ve reached that time in life when you’re stating to pick investments over adventure, clean over scenic, comfortable over intense; when, even though in your heart of hearts you’re only seventeen, the rest of you is (how did it happen?) forty.

    The wise and witty lady of It’s Hard to Be Hip Over Thirty is here to get you through these forty-ish years with poems that reflect our common shared experience. So let her help you take a look at that decade of sagging kneecaps and college reunions and fantasies of love in the afternoon: at Maoist kids, cholesterol counts, adult-education courses and other atrocities—which somehow just don’t hurt so much when you laugh.

    A marvelous book filled with insight and warmth, How Did I Get to Be 40 & Other Atrocities is Judith Viorst at her best.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster
    Release dateOct 21, 2014
    ISBN9781501105883
    How Did I Get to Be Forty: And Other Atrocities
    Author

    Judith Viorst

    Judith Viorst is the author of the beloved Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, which has sold some four million copies; the Lulu books, including Lulu and the Brontosaurus; the New York Times bestseller Necessary Losses; four musicals; and poetry for children and adults. Her most recent books of poetry include What Are You Glad About? What Are You Mad About? and Nearing Ninety. She lives in Washington, DC.

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      Judith is hard to beat, whether writing for children or those of us "beyond a certain age!"

    Book preview

    How Did I Get to Be Forty - Judith Viorst

    Contents

    40

    The Truth

    No More Babies

    The Good Daughter

    There Isn’t a Thing to Worry About

    Beauty Is Only Skin Deep

    College Reunion

    Among Other Thoughts on Our Wedding Anniversary

    Mid-Life Crisis

    other atrocities

    The Whole Truth

    Leonard the Liberated Husband

    Life Isn’t Fair

    Secret Meetings

    Some People’s Children

    Eating My Heart Out

    Open House

    Three in the Morning

    getting by

    Nothing But the Truth

    The Sensuous Woman

    Adult Education

    Self-Improvement Program

    Another Wife’s Husband

    Twenty Questions

    Alone

    Facing the Facts

    About Judith Viorst

    For Joseph H. Smith and Phyllis Hersh

    The Truth

    The truth is

    If I had it all to do over

    I still wouldn’t study Swahili,

    Learn to fly a plane,

    Or take 92 lovers,

    Some of them simultaneously.

    The truth is

    If I lived my life again

    I still wouldn’t leap before looking,

    I still wouldn’t count my chickens before they were hatched,

    And I’d still, just in case I was hit by a car and had to be rushed to the hospital and examined,

    Wear clean underwear.

    The truth is

    If I got a second chance

    I still wouldn’t know a forward pass from a backward one,

    A self-effacing wine from a presumptuous one,

    Or a man who, if I let him pick me up, would be rich, sincere, and of the same religious persuasion

    From a man who, if I let him pick me up, would wind up being a homicidal rapist.

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