How Did I Get to Be Forty: And Other Atrocities

By Judith Viorst

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Release date: Oct 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781501105883

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 young adults. Her most recent books of poetry include What Are You Glad About? What Are You Mad About? and Nearing Ninety.

Book preview

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.

Reviews for How Did I Get to Be Forty

[merrymary_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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